Events: '08 Bromont WC XC Report

I bet you ladies wish you had boots like me Colin Meagher

Somewhere behind all the clouds shrouding Bromont, the sun came up. I live in Seattle, and I kid you not, I've seen more rain fall out of the sky since I arrived here a week ago than I saw all last winter. Which gave us media types one extra task to attend to for our pre-race ritual: the wrapping of ridiculously expensive electronic bits in (hopefully) water tight plastic or something as close to that as we can get. My personal favorite? The poor man's water-tight housing for the camera body--a two gallon zip lock baggy. As well as quart sized freezer bags and gaffer tape for the flash gear.

Suitably armored against the elements (fingers firmly X'd), we headed out to the venue and proceeded to hide in the pits or the media room. Anywhere except the race track; the rain mixed with pre-riding the track over the past few days had created more than one ankle deep mud bog along the track, and peanut buttery-type side hill traverses almost everywhere else. All in all, the day was promising to be one of those races that defines "epic conditions."

The ladies
The women went off in a rather small bunch of 42 condemned souls. Not exactly a stacked field, but with the Luna team, Marie Helen Premont, and Lene Byberg in the mix it was sure to be a good show. Lap one saw Catherine Pendrel from the Luna squad seize the reins and squeeze every ounce of speed out of her bike that she could.

"On that first descent, I just opened it up and let my bike do its thing. Then I put as much power as I could into the climbs. My tires (Maxxis Medusas) were awesome in the slop up top, too."

She got a bit of help when Premont had a front derailleur problem that forced her to stop twice, but that's part of racing. Catherine got out front and stayed there. Marie-Helen kept trying to come back, but by then the gap was just too big. Back behind those two, Katerina Nash had powered her way past first Georgia Gould, and then a strong Lene Byberg and locked down the third spot, Georgia, meanwhile, eased up quite a bit and played it safe. As she put it, "My goal was survival. Bejing's in two weeks, and now is not the time to do something stupid--especially on this course. So I played it conservative on the descents."

In the end, it was the Luna team supreme, with 1, 3, and 5 spots. Marie-Helen took second, and Lene took fourth.

For a photo gallery from this event go HERE.

I would so not be smiling at this point in a race of this technical difficulty... Colin Meagher

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