World Cup Round 6, Windham a�� Practice -

Sam Hill waits for the lift in the early afternoon sun

Today we arrived to the Windham track with the top of the hill covered in a dense cloud. The wind was blowing quite hard at the top, but we felt the cloud would clear quite quickly and reveal another lovely day. The riders began to roll down the hill with the fog still over the top of the hill, but not far from the start gate it thinned and cleared, leaving a lovel blue sky, with patches of the low cloud blwoing through. The cloud had left the track a little damp on the surface, but it only took a couple of riders to clear the slightly moist top layer to reveal a skatey lower layer that stayed for the remainder of the day. The surface was slightly deceptive as it looks very grippy, but many riders reported it was in fact not tacky at all.

Casey Brown was looking very quick in todays practice

Manon Carpenter watched a few go past this section, also looking very quick today

The sun came out and the forest to open area contrast was a challenge for the riders, but the sunw as drying the track further, and it was nice to not stand in the rain for once. By the time B practice had finished the track was starting to look a little worse for wear, with the juniors having plenty of energy and throwing in heaps of runs, leaving the track with some ruts in some of the corners that were a little more challenging due to being flat.

By A practice some cloud had rolled in, but it hadn’t dropped any rain, it just reduced the air temperature a little, but the cloud then became patchy and was very similar to this morning. The wind was picking up though, with many riders having to contemplate off some of the jumps due to the gusts. Something to mention is that all the riders seemed to climb right up to ace pace almost instantly, there was no real warm up, just one scouting run and then everyone turned up the speed dial, if there is one thing we are sure of its that this race will be fast and likely to be tight too.