6-12-07 // Online Exclusive: The Champery WC Downhill Report

Racers que up for their runs. Downhill racing at the 2007 Champery World Cup, Switzerland. Colin Meagher

The Downhill race course at Champery is a monster: 1650 meters long, and a vertical drop of 580 meters. In English, that translates to a vertical drop of about 1900 feet in just over a mile. In practical terms it means steep as hell; this would be a challenging ski run with snow on it.

The soil composition is primarily clay. This means bad dirt in mountain bike terms: when wet, if you go too slow, it cakes up your tires; go too fast and you may as well be skating on ice in tennis shoes. And this track was soaked. The skies had opened up the previous night—the same rain that forced a hold in the 4X racing—and never really eased off for much more than a few minutes until mid morning the day of the race.

Conditions had become so slick, in fact, that a short delay to start was called by the officials in an effort to clear an off camber root section deemed too dangerous for racing. Last minute tire changes were made by men—regardless of sponsorship—in an effort to try and accommodate the “brown ice” conditions; the Maxxis Wetscream tire seemed to be the rubber of choice, although there were a lot of Michelin mud spike tires to be seen as well. Even more telling how bad the traction was, many racers were swapping to flat pedals vs. clips—the better to tripod their way down the more unpredictable sections.

Marielle Saner takes the log drop. Colin Meagher

The Women’s DH

The women’s race was a pretty conservative affair. With the slick conditions, no one was really willing to go flat out. Exceptions were Merielle Saner and Tracey Hannah; both opted to take a nasty log drop into an immediate left hand turn that the rest of the woman and a lot of the men were passing up. It paid off with top qualifying spots, and continued with both of them securing podium positions.

Women’s shake-out: Merielle Saner 4:59.22; Emmaline Ragot, 5:01.59; Sabrina Jonnier, 5:02.08; Mio Suemasa, 5:13.80; and Tracey Hannah with the number 5 position at 5:16.89—watch out for Mick’s little sister; if you weren’t already aware, she’s 18 years old and has loads of talent. In two to three years she’ll own the circuit like no one since Anne Caroline.

KHS rider Melissa Buhl on course to qualify Colin Meagher