MariborWC#1

World Cup #1 Maribor, Slovenia

 

It was a long journey down to Maribor; we drove straight from Fort William from the national to Slovenia for the first World Cup of the season.

After my successful result in Maribor last year (14^th) I was feeling confident about the race. I was a little anxious, as is everyone, for the first WC.  The Trek Session was all prepped up and ready to go so it was game on! I was ranked 19^th, so top 20 practice for me. J

The course walk was slippery! It had rained pretty hard when we arrived – we were ready for a wet weekend! It was pretty much the exact same track as last year, only with a couple of changes in some sections. I couldn’t wait to get riding!

The track had dried up loads on Friday for practice and it was almost time for a high roller swap! I only did a good couple of runs to get to know the track and just spent the time enjoying riding my session. It was going to change for qualifying; the weather report was going to be 12hours of rain! Lovely! Looks like the British weather followed us to Slovenia!  

True to forecast – it rained....hard. However, even though my trousers were covered in mud and falling down from the weight (though kind of the fashion at the moment with trousers half way down your backside...) the riding was awesome. I couldn’t begin to describe how much fun I was having sliding around and getting loose. It showed in my qualifying run as I qualified in 9^th place out of 36 riders with the second fastest speed trap time (Sabrina Jonnier was just faster than me...) and only 13 seconds off the leader.  It was wicked and knew I could have gone faster.

I woke up on race day really excited and motivated, but when I looked outside and saw some sun... initially I was happy but then after all the rain yesterday – I knew today was going to be hard with the mud drying up.

It was so hard to ride and everyone else was struggling too, I crashed hard in practice and the race was something else! I have never ridden in anything like that before. The only way to describe it was that it was like riding in slimy, thick clay. With ruts and holes. I struggled on in the race and rode like a weapon. I came off on one of the sections and lost loads of time. I finished in 16^th place which was disappointing as I know I was riding well that weekend; thankfully the qualifying did me justice! However – I am now ranked 15^th in the World Cup so that was a good consolation!

Overall, the weekend was great fun despite all the washing and flat cleaning! I’m looking forward to the rest of the season now... 

Next up:

>> World Cup #2 – Fort William, Scotland ı 6-7^th June <<