Connor Fearon gives us his exclusive wrap up from the best result, to date, of his career, you know the drill; For us racers we didn’t really have a break between Fort William and Leogang, we spend Monday and Tuesday travelling the distance from Scotland to Austria and Wednesday we start setting up tents for the Leogang World Cup. So it’s two big weeks for everyone involved in the World Cup series. In a way I sort of wish we had more consecutive races like this, instead of having 7 races strung out over half a year. Anyway, I’ve always done pretty good at Leogang. 2012 I got 3rd at the junior world championships and 2013 I finished 10th overall and that was my best result until now. Last week I finished 14th in Scotland so I was looking forward to crack into the top 10 here again.
The track had changed quite a lot since last year. The top third of the track had been completely reconstructed. Where there used to be a lot of turns they replaced with a few man made rock gardens and straight sections. I didn’t really like the look of it and after riding it on Friday I was even less of a fan. In good new the rest of the track was the same with a pretty unchallenging middle section that is flat with jumps in it and the bottom section was quite steep and technical, this is where I usually make up some time on the stronger riders who excel in the middle pedalling section. I struggled quite a bit with practice on Friday. My bike which was set up perfectly for the Fort William track wasn’t quite working for the track in Leogang so we made a lot of changes to my suspension and other things like ride height to cater for the different style of track. I talked to a lot of other riders who where having difficulty getting comfortable on the track as well.
I was happy when I qualified 11th because it reassured me I was at the same point as last year. The times where really, really tight. I knew anybody in the top 15 probably had a good chance of finishing in the top 5.
I could go on for ages about my race run but i’ll keep it short, it was really good I hit a lot of lines better than I had in practice but made a pretty decent mistake at the bottom which definitely cost me. I honestly think I would have been close if not on the podium if I hadn’t made the mistake. I ended up 9th only 2.6 seconds off 1st place and a mere .7 of a second from 5th position. But it makes me realise that there where a handful of other riders saying “what if” as well, like Bruni who was undoubtedly the fastest rider on the day to crash at the bottom and finish in the thirties. I’ve come away from this race slightly disappointed but also hopeful that one day i’ll get on that podium. There’s a pretty big gap from now until Mont Saint Anne so I’m headed home to get a few good weeks of training in before heading back to Canada. Thanks to all my sponsors and people that help me out Kona Bikes, Fox, Maxxis, SRAM, Rockshox, Avid, Truvativ, Stans and Yakima rack.
What a result for Connor! We can’t help but feel that podium can’t be too far away, next we head to Canada for the legendary Mont Sainte Anne!
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