The third round of the UCI World Cup downhill series dropped into the picturesque Pyrenees mountain valleys of Andorra. The majestic snow covered mountain backdrop is an amazing site and is almost surreal as if you were put into a landscape oil painting. Amazing as it was the week started out a little gloomy with cold heavy rain and snow so the GT Bicycles MTB team was prepared to deal with whatever the weather would throw at them. Just as everyone was bundled up for the worse the sun broke out by Friday and we were treated to a beautiful weekend.

 

The whole GT Bicycles team was in attendance and this year’s roster is as impressive as ever. The star-studded  line-up includes 4X hombres Roger Rinderknecht (Switzerland) and Luke Madill (Australia). The 4X event kicked off the weekend’s festivities with a large field of 60 racers ready to battle it out on the long and fast Andorra course. Roger and Luke qualified well towards the top of the field with Roger just barely missing out on the top qualifier spot by .04 seconds. The boys dominated all of their elimination rounds on their GT Zaskar hardtail bikes and barreled their way into the final! The final would be a true challenge with the likes of current UCI < Jared Graves and Joost Wichman in the gate. As the gate dropped all four battled elbow to elbow into the first turn with Roger pulling into the front. Luke got pushed back to 4th but was poking his nose in on Graves who was in front of him. Luke would sneak by Jared but there was still a battle out front. Just as it looked like Roger had it all locked up he swung a little wide into the second to last turn just enough to allow Joost to dive underneath causing Roger to go down and giving Joost the win with Luke in 2nd, Graves in 3rd and Roger in 4th. By having two GT riders in the final it gave the team enough points to take over the lead for the UCI 4X < team! An amazing day for Luke, Roger and GT Bicycles.

 

Nobody knew what to expect for the downhill with all of the heavy rains and snow forecasted but when the weather broke for the weekend it got everyone excited for some awesome racing. Marc, Mick and Kevin were primed to bomb down the mountain but Mick ended up getting a bad case of the stomach flu at the start of the week which ended up taking its toll in more ways than one. During training Mick found himself bouncing off of tree stumps and rocks when his physically drained body couldn’t keep up with his speed into a drop in the lower tree section. Now Mick would have to deal with the aches and pains of the spill along with his cramping and nausea. A normal person would be done for the next month but Mick manned up and “cruised” his qualifying run to a top-20 finish which doubled him over in pain at the finish line. Needless to say, Mick called it a day and went back to the room to rest up and prepare for the finals the next day.

 

Marc and Kevin had a solid couple of days of practice to prepare them for their qualifying runs on Saturday. Marc had a feeler run and qualified in 16th position for the finals. After his run he said “I felt like it took me a while to get up to speed, I need to charge it more out of the start”. Marc would put the experience in his memory bank for the use during the finals on Sunday. As for Kevin, he wasn’t as fortunate. He had great speed and flow on the top part of the course and his intermediate split was a top-20 time. He had a great run going until he lost his line and it sent him off the course temporarily and finished out the run. His time would land him .001 of a second out of the cut for qualifying. A heart breaker for sure but Kevin will chalk it up to experience and move on to his next race. Being a rookie on the UCI World Cup this season, Kevin is using the time to learn and adapt to prepare him for next season.

 

Finals began rolling down the hill at 2:00pm and Mick and Mark wouldn’t be coming down until the end of the order putting them on course just after 3:00. Mick had taken a couple of warm up runs to see where his strength was and plan his strategy for his final run. When Mick rolled down his split times were good but not great. It would turn out that his split times wouldn’t be the factor as he killed the lower half of the course to take over the Nissan Hot Seat. He would occupy the seat until the last four riders came down. These four riders have been the fastest in the world for the last four years and Mick was in the hunt. After the last rider came down Mick would sit atop of the * on the podium. When Mick was asked what he thought of his result, the usually unexcitable Hannah simply said “Awesome!” There wasn’t much in his expectations other than to just finish the course but to land his fourth straight podium spot while being sick and injured was simply amazing.

 

 

The team splits up over the next few weeks as Mick and Marc make their way to Lisbon, Portugal to the famed Lisbon Downtown Race. Kevin will hop across back to the states to hook up with teammate/legend Eric Carter for the US Open in New Jersey. The team will all meet back up in Fort William Scotland for the next round of the UCI World Cup downhill on June 6th and 7th. Please check back in to www.gtbicycles.com for more updates on the team happenings.