So over the past weekend was the final round of the Italian cup series, held at Caldirola near Genova. Myself and Brook travelled straight there after getting off the plane in Milan, and were both pretty smashed from the 30 hours travelling from Sydney, there so some sleep was first thing on the cards for us. The next day we checked out the course and were not overly impressed with what we saw the top section was super flat with a big pedal out of the start, and the rest of it was really wide and fast but lacking any technical sections, we did a few runs after walking it and pretty much got all our lines sorted in about 3 runs. There were a few jumps in the course that were pretty fun, especially one big triple that would of been about 40-50foot to a flat landing made for some harsh bottom outs but a few laughs as well.
The next day we did a few more practice runs and got the course dialed, so did some runs on one of the other tracks which was probably better than the race track, as it was off camber turns the whole way down. Caldirola probably had the slowest chairlift ever and with only one person chairs, there were huge lines for the lift, although they had just finished building the raddest luge on rails, me an Brook got to try it out and raced each other down hitting some mega G's on a few of the turns.
Then race day rolled around and it was a early start for us with practice only from 7 till 9, earliest I've got up in while thats for sure haha.. I did 2 runs with Brook and all went well apart from on the 2nd run a kamikaze rider tried to take me out when we were passing him, I don't know what was more funny that or the fact that he was wearing MotoX boots, theres certainly a few guys rocking some "out of it" riding kits over here!
So finally after watching the thousand other classes come down the hill it was time for my qualifying run, I set off pretty well putting in the pedals but held back a bit in some sections to save some energy for the race run, I qualified 3rd half a second off fastest qualifier Nathan Rankin with Marco Bugone keeping the Italians happy in 2nd. Brook was in 5th place and had saved some for the final as well.
It was the final that wasn't meant to be though...with thunder and lightning, hail and rain all coming in at once, just when they were down to the top 15 riders. We were all pretty much still running dry tires too as thats all we had on and no one had tear offs! It was one wild run probably couldn't count with both hands how many "moments" I had, I snapped my chain about halfway which was shit left me coasting the rest of the way to to the finish. I was just happy to have finished the race and to get out of my saturated clothes. So it turned out the lightning had caused the timing to go down for the last 10 riders, which I was kinda happy with as then I wouldn't get smoked by the random guys that had dry runs, but it still would of been good to have seen our times in the wet..so I ended up 3rd and Rankin took the win, Brook took 5th and the junior win not too bad of a weekend. Roll on Schladming for World Cup Finals though!!
Thanks to Tomaso and Alberto for keeping the bike tip top, No thanks to Hotel Vittoria for the rabbit grade food and rock hard beds..Finally thanks to all my sponsors, Ancillotti Cycles, UFO Plast, Doganaccia 2000, San Marco seats, CampaBros, NZRIDE, Maxxis Tires, Landini Auto, Formula Brakes.
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