Photo Gallery: '08 Mont-Saint-Anne Downhill

The rain slacked off the night before the big dance for the gravity racers here at Mont-Saint-Anne, which dried out the track quite a bit. Many racers were caught by surprise at just how quickly Mt. St. Anne can dry out and were frantically making last-second tire changes, going from spikes to something faster, like a Maxxis High Roller—pretty much the tire of choice here at St. Anne.

The Ladies:

Qualifying went off with no big surprises, other than Melissa Buhl suffering a mechanical that kept her out of the final by almost a minute. Disappointing, but that’s racing. The ladies kept it to the usual suspects, with the top five qualifiers being Rachel Atherton, Tracey Mosely, Emmeline Ragot, Sabrina Jonnier, and Florian Pugin. Celine Gros marked a DNF too, but given the potential for flats at this place, it’s not too surprising that a couple of the top ladies would be out of it before it really started.

With the final, things got a bit more interesting, but there were no real surprises. Rachel kept the rubber side down and mounted a rocket to her bike and managed to drop her qualifying time by 6 seconds, taking the top spot on the podium; but Sabrina Jonnier turned it up a notch and took second all of 1.43 seconds back. Tracey Mosely kept the skinsuit from Fort Williams and came in third, 9.50 seconds back. That’s a time deficit a skinsuit won't make up. Back another 13 seconds was Japan’s fastest DH rider Mio Suemasa, then Fionn Griffiths, another second back.

The Men:

In a downhill run, there are so many things to consider: Tires, traction, large rocks that want to eat your wheels, and not hitting trees while keeping it as wide open as you can. After a couple of close encounters of the hard wood kind, World Cup Circuit regular Nico Vink squeaked out a finals dance by the skin of his remaining teeth: 24 hundredths of second. Considerably better than Filip Polc, who DNF’d. Or Cedric Gracia, who flatted. But it ended with the regulars coming out on top: Minnaar, Hill, Atherton (Gee), Kovarik, and Peaty.

Heading into the finals, Vink kept his run clean and managed to take the hot seat for a good long time—almost 20 minutes. That’s when hard-charging Luke Strobel burned up the course with a time of 4:55.02, not bad for a kid coming off a 3-month hiatus with a broken scaphoid bone. He got pretty comfortable in the lead, but was knocked off soon enough; it has been a 3-month lay off, after all. Riders came down; times came down; and the top spot was treated like a tug-toy in the middle of a pack of rottweilers. The final came down to the last rider, with Sam Hill on top and hoping for another win, only to have a healthy Greg Minnaar dash his hopes by 1.73 seconds. Gee Atherton took third, followed by Steve Peat and Fabien Barel.

The big news of the weekend, though, was Yeti’s Aaron Holmes Gwin. The kid has been racing DH since November and flying under the radar, flatting out at Nationals last week. But drop him onto a World Cup track and watch him fly. He finished tenth, the best showing by an American on the Worlds circuit in quite a while. Keep an eye on him.