World Cup Check In
Issue 54 / Wed 27th Jun, 2018
It's been an exciting start to the World Cup season with new winners, new venues, injuries, and crashes galore. The FS Funn Factory team are here to give us the latest on the first three rounds of action from the world stage.
World Cups never fail to entertain, and this year is no different. For 2018 the contrast is stark, new venues meet old classics, and the new school of riders are starting to demand a place on the podium. The first three races have seen brand new winners, young upstarts keeping the hot seat warm for far longer than expected, and venues that no one had heard of let alone pronounce correctly. Add in some urban sections, injuries and 'that woods section' and you have a bonkers start to the racing season.
This year we are lucky enough to be getting the inside scoop from the FS Funn Factory team as they tackle the World Cups head on. Bryn Dickerson has been having a great season and is definitely on the up, along with Veronika Widman and Harry Molloy. We delve into Bryn’s Diary and see what we can unearth...
New versus old, little versus big, van versus gondolas, city versus mountains, and octopus versus midge. Losinj, really couldn’t have been much more different from Fort William and Leogang. To say people were sceptical about the small Croatian island before the circus arrived in town would be an understatement. With outright criticism on Social Media (normally the place of reserved and respectful comments...wait, what!?) no one knew what to expect. However, upon arrival at a stunning harbour setting, gorgeous sunshine, delicious food, and a track that promised exciting racing, it was a welcome break from the usual stops.
Fort William is like the old bike in the shed that someone (probably the significant other) has been telling you to get rid of for years. You know everything about it and want to move on to better things, but it has a certain charm and far too many memories to sell. With a track that was 90% the same as last year and 30,000 screaming Brits there, the only point to mention were those bloody midges...seriously, take a hike.
Leogang, however, was a breath of fresh air, a track that is usually stale was this year transformed into so much more thanks to some new course taping and beautiful sunny weather! It’s amazing how effective the taping can be.
For 2018 I’m delighted to be riding with the same friends from last year. Harry Molloy (UK) and Veronika Widmann (Italy) are both great riders and awesome people. Being comfortable in your surroundings is key to racing well, and despite Harry farting and Veronika spilling everything all over the place, we make a pretty good team (I’m perfect of course...).
Joining us for this season is Ben Stephens (he is actually perfect). A great friend of mine for over ten years, he is our spanner-man extraordinaire and does a fantastic job despite all of our best efforts to break things. We have yet to present him with a problem he can’t fix and believe me; we’ve done some pretty stupid stuff.
Downhill bikes are just epic; it’s so hard to describe how or why but riding them is just too cool. Absolutely capable, comfortable and composed, they are the supercars of mountain biking and this year we have the Aston Martin Vulcan.
When frames from the lads at Y-Tizzle (YT industries), suspension from the orange fluffy fellas (Fox), the FUNNest components (FUNN) and Two Really Powerful brakes (TRP) are combined with some brotherly love for the racing (Racing bros) and Maximum grip (Maxxis), you get a result that (when tastefully dressed up by SDG) is absolutely stunning. Even Just swinging a leg over feels fast enough to catch a sheep or two and riding it is like being Ant-Man on a tracer bullet.
As I write this we are currently in Ted Hendy (Ted is our transit van courtesy of The HENDY group) smashing it through Germany and it’s pretty wild to think that Croatia was so long ago. I came into 2018 off my best ever World Cup result in Val Di Sole last year (20th), while Veronika was firmly ensconced in the top 15. Harry’s 2017 was comparable to soggy breadsticks thanks to two broken hands at different stages of the season and was coming in all guns blazing.
Despite boundless enthusiasm in Croatia, the new UCI rules were not making life easy for Harry or I with the men's qualifying numbers reduced from 80 to 60 riders to match the women’s reduction from 20 to 15 riders last year. Walking the fine line between crashing or going too slow, I had a great weekend qualifying 29th and racing to 32nd while Veronika doubled down on her qualifying result to finish 14th in the race. Harry, unfortunately, slipped on a banana skin and fell foul of the reduced qualifiers, finishing 71st and missing out on the finals by the slimmest of margins. A positive start to 2018, I headed home to continue training and coaching while Harry and Veronika continued preparations over here.
Fort William is always a hard track to race and this year was no different. We got exceptionally lucky with the weather. Thunderstorms and rain were forecast for almost every day yet we only saw a bit of rain during qualifying. This was the first race that we had both Ben with us and our new tools/stands from Feedback Sports. The difference was amazing, after a run I was able to rehydrate (Thanks Horleys!) while my bike was properly checked over. This is something I will never take for granted having done it myself for the last three years.
We were all feeling strong after practice, and the excellent work continued from Croatia with Veronika qualifying 11th and myself 40th. Harry pushed hard but was unlucky to crash twice during his run and missed the finals. With the qualifying rain I mentioned earlier making things slippery on race day, maximum effort was applied, and we were rewarded by improving our positions. Veronika nailed her run to slot into 10th and our first team point for the 2018 season while I made up 3.5 seconds to finish in 38th position.
Coming into Leogang, it had been a full on ten days. Landing in London and driving the 10 hours to Fort William the next day, racing and then packing up the car to drive for two days straight down to Austria took its toll. Why the UCI decides to have these two World Cups back to back rather than two Europe based races continues to baffle the entire World Cup scene but hey, so be it...
Thanks to some inspired course taping, the usual highway was transformed into something so much more. Why it took them this long to make what were essentially simple changes is a mystery but hey, better late than never and my god they were good. The first off-camber section cut up nicely on practice day and was a barrel of fun all weekend, the perfect way to start your run. Further down, similar small changes made you think about where you were putting your wheels while travelling at Mach Chicken (Kiwi for really bloody fast) and contributed to a very engaging track.
What this meant for racing was that the times were going to be exceptionally tight. With its central location, Leogang attracts the biggest field of any World Cup and this combined with the new top 60 rules and fast track meant you couldn’t leave anything on the hill if you wanted to make it to the big show.
With the forecast rain holding off again, Veronika got on track and absolutely smoked it, qualifying in 9th place and setting herself up for a spot on Redbull TV! I suffered from some pre-race nerves, putting down a run that was the epitome of yin and yang, half jackpot at the pokies and half Sunday morning hangover. Sitting in 58th place for half an hour I was a nervous wreck but luckily stayed where I was and scraped through into Sunday’s final.
Harry’s run of bad luck continued, having a reasonable run but finishing 0.347 behind the cut-off in 63rd. What is interesting is that the top 60 men were separated by a mere 10 seconds, six people per second shows just how cutthroat this sport is and that any mistake will cost you dearly.
Come race day; all eyes were on Veronika who was first up, looking to see her cement that top 10 qualifying spot. She looked good on track, holding speed and pedalling hard, coming across into 1st place and earning herself some quality hot-seat time. She would eventually finish 8th on the day, her best result this year and earning our team some more points!
I was feeling a lot better about life on race day and was ready to crack on. I had a great start and was riding well, coming off the middle section, however; I blew my left hand off the handlebar at about 40kph and just about put my stomach through my stem. To this day I have no idea how I didn’t crash right then and there, particularly going over the next section, it was certainly a wide eyes, brown pants moment (thank you training program). I somehow got my hand back on the bars and continued on, but I was shaken up and lost time as a result. Finishing in 49th place, it was easy to be frustrated, but this disappeared with Veronika and her impressive result!
For now, we have a couple of European cups to attend before meeting up with the whole circus in time for Val di Sole. We’ll see you all there!
Videos
By Bryn Dickerson
