Photo Gallery: '08 Mt. St. Anne Four Cross

It is amazing the 4X race actually took place. First the rain cancelled practice on Thursday. Then the course was too soft to hold up to any substantial abuse on Friday--the day we usually get to see the qualifying. Practice was voided shortly after Cedric Gracia slipped his front wheel off the chicken-wire-covered jump face and chundered his arm. 20 stitches. Ouch.

That meant that the racers would get to practice, qualify, and then race, all in one afternoon. Double ouch, especially for guys like Dan Atherton and Flip Polc who had done the DH earlier that day.

But a day of hard sun made the track rideable, if barely, and according to the UCI, the show would go on.

Practice was something of a gong show, with riders trying to dial in lines and sort out passing zones. When the qualifying started it looked pretty grim, with only nine women and 37 men giving it a shot. It went pretty smoothly though, and with 20 minutes until finals, it was time to settle in and get a good seat.

Then it got dark and the thunder started. A lightning show began down on the river and threatened to stop the race, but somehow we managed to dodge that bullet and the event continued as planned. Melissa Buhl defended her rainbow stripes in the women's final, going inside-outside on the third turn to take the lead and the win.

"Anneke'd been going outside on that turn," Buhl said, "so I waited until that corner and then went inside."

Mio Suemasa took second, Fionn Griffiths took third, Anneke took fourth, and Anita Molcik took fifth.

In the men's event, a stitched-together Cedric Gracia rode his way into the finals, and was sitting in third until he got tangled up with Guido Tschugg as he went for the same move that Melissa had pulled off earlier. Rafael Alvarez, the current world champ, took the win, with Romain Saladini in second, and Tschugg in third. Gracia was forced to settle for fourth, and former Kona rider Kamil Tatarkovic took the small final win for fifth place.