Leogang World Cup - E.T.

Last weekend was the third UCI World Cup race in Leogang, Austria.  After narrowly missing qualifying at the last World Cup, I was determined to give it my all in Leogang.

I arrived late Wednesday afternoon with it taking me roughly 7 hours to drive there from Germany.  I was pleasantly surprised by the on-site camping set-up.  For less than 40 Euro I had hot showers, electricity (if needed) and was a stones-throw from the pits and gondola.  Sweet!!!

The next day was registration followed by course walk.  For some reason they put racer registration half a mile down the road which kinda sucked.  I rode my bike and got in line for registration.  I handed the UCI official my license, he checked his computer, and told me I was not entered.  What!!??

I had given USA Cycling all of the info and had been told I would be entered.  The UCI official gave me an e-mail address and told me to have USA Cycling contact it to get me a late entry.  I went to the press room and typed up an e-mail to USA Cycling explaining the situation.

At this point I was livid.  I had traveled all the way here, it was the last race of my European trip, and I was most likely going to be a spectator.  Regardless, there still was a chance I might get entered so I headed up the gondola for the track walk.



This was the fastest track walk I have ever done.  I didn’t really spend much time looking at anything in detail.  I just walked down to see what it was all about.  The track looked pretty sick with steep rough sections, technical woods sections, and a few jumps for the crowd.

Next morning was the moment of truth for me.  While everybody else was heading out for the first day of practice, I headed over to registration to see if USA Cycling had sorted me out.  Lucky for me, they had worked some magic and I was now the last rider entered in the World Cup.

Stoked to be allowed to race, I prepped my bike, threw on my race kit, and headed up for practice. 

My first impression of the track was that I needed a stiffer fork!  Steep and rough sections had me riding my bike hanging off the back which is not the best position to be in.  After the first run I added compression damping and raised the ride height of my front fork.  The next run was night and day better so I decided to raise my forks even further and increase the compression damping even more.  Maxing out at 23mm higher than my normal fork height things started to click on the course.  I was having a great time riding until it rained…



It rained HARD!  Hanging out in the pits during the storm we literally had close to an inch of water flowing through the entire pits.  I wished I had a skim board!  After the storm lightened up I decided to do another run without changing to mud spikes.  Big mistake!  I crashed my brains out and finished our practice session scraped up, muddy, and with a bad taste in my mouth.

Saturday was practice and qualifying and I had now switched to mud tires after my bad experience the day before.  The tires made all the difference in the world and I finally felt up to speed on track.  Because of my late entry I was one of the last riders to go in qualifying.  I knew the track would be destroyed, even rougher, and more rutted-out than what I had practiced.  I attacked though.  No sense in not qualifying for a third time!

¾ of the way finished with my qualifying run, I caught the guy in front of me.  Due to the technical nature of this section of the track, it was difficult to pass.  I followed the slower rider down the last ¼ of the track.  Luckily he pedaled hard with me screaming at him all the way to the finish.  I crossed the line in 52nd place out of 233 racers safely making it into the top 80 qualifying cut-off.  Stoked!  Finally I get to race!

After a LONG time spent cleaning and prepping my bike and kit, I hit up a shower, and treated myself to a nice dinner at the restaurant nearby.  That night sleeping in my van, it sounded as if it rained all night.  I thought this might make the course better for race day, but I was wrong.



My first practice run ended up being my last…I got cross-rutted and sent over the bars going close to 30mph.  I tumbled at least 50 feet down the hill with my bike tumbling an additional 50 feet only to be stopped by a barb wire fence.  NICE!!!  Great way to start off my race day…

Hurting quite a bit, I gimped my way down and again started the cleaning and prepping for my race run.  It didn’t really matter now how I did in the race.  I was just happy to not be too hurt and still able to take my run.

My race run was amazing for the first 50 seconds!  I attacked the course just the way I wanted too until I unfortunately crashed.  I blew off the course in a whooped-out, muddy, rutted section, coating my hands and grips in mud.  I tried to get back on to the course, but was slipping in the mud and getting nowhere.  At this point I had no chance of doing good so I removed my gloves, got out of the way for Neethling, and cleaned off my grips as best as possible.  I then jumped in behind the next rider and cruised down the rest of the course just having fun and throwing some whips for the crowd.

Again with the cleaning only now I would be boxing up my bike to fly to SFO the next morning.  Stoked to not be hurt too bad, but bummed that I hadn’t been able to keep on my bike in the finals, I began the long journey to Whistler.

Now that I’m here in Whistler, I’m relaxing, riding, and training for the U.S. National Champs coming next month.  I can’t wait to see what I can do at this race!

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates from Whistler.

Cheers,

Evan