Mont-Saint-Anne World Cup
It was great being able to get out to do the Canadian World Cups. I had only a week in which to raise the money to get out there. I had put buckets on the end to the tills where I work in CO-OP and had raised £250 that way. My sister, Nicky Donnelly, also paid for the flight which I now owe her so a big shout out to Nick!
I got out there on the Tuesday and was picked up by the South African rider Jo Petterson. Bless her, she came out to get me then drove 3hrs late at night! I got to Fee’s (Fionn Griffiths) place about 1am, I was so tired! I didn’t realise but practice was on the Thursday instead of Friday, so Wednesday was spend prepping my bike and making sure we walked the tracked and signed in.
The track was pretty long; it’s longer than Fort William but with less peddling! It was really technical with a few hidden and blind drops, couple of jumps and plenty of small rock gardens. This track looked super fast, I was pretty scared!
Practice was so good it was unreal. It did take me a while to get into it, I kept forgetting where the drops were so ended up over the bars a few times. I guess this was good in a way as I soon learned where they were!! I loved going fast and I tried to push myself. I was definitely not up to race pace yet but I was getting there.
Learning the lines was difficult as there was so much content, but each section was different so I found it easy to link the sections up. By Friday’s practice I was up to race pace and feeling really good. The weather was fantastic but I heard it was going to be raining for qualifying; I was trying to stay positive, just like I did in Maribor.
Qualifying went well, I tried to do some silly lines and risk qualifying so I would come down with a bad time but in a good position and know there was more to give. I wanted a top 10 here so much. I came down in 15th place, 5m51s – only 8 seconds off top 10 and 15 seconds off top 5. I did the rubbish lines and I knew where I lost time. In my mind I could have gone 15 seconds faster. I could have made this time up no bother, I made 23 seconds up at the National Championship!
Race day is always a different story and always in different conditions. Qualifying was reasonably dry, but race day was slick. I couldn’t seem to get in the zone, my mind wondered off far too much in my run, braked too much so I didn’t ride well at all. I ended up in 18th place with a time of 6m05s.
My world ranking just went from 18th to 17th. So I was really happy I managed to get the points together to move up in the rankings!