The Scenery here in Norway is about as picturesque as it gets! The weather changes so quickly,as the locals say ‘four days all in one’! Expect some wet practice days but the forecast for finals is sunny at the moment.
The final World Cup is upon us, Hafjell Norway gets the honours of closing out season 2012. The overall men’s series may be decided but there will still be lots of action!
We hit up a track walk with Connor Fearon, Mitch Delfs, Luke Strobel and Kyle Sangers, plus a few other riders here and there, so lets check out the track;
Getting to the track is an adventure in itself, 11 minutes from the top of the Gondola to the start of the track by foot, at least the riders will have bikes!Straight out of the start hut in the top right and into a big set of jumps, riders are tipping though that if they link everything up right the jumps might be too small!From here riders hit one of many rock gardens on the track…The track should deal with water well, even after yesterdays rain there were hardly any wet areas on the track.The sun and wind combine to remove the moisture pretty quickly, the wooded sections were the possible exception. With the large number of roots and rocks on the track expect it to be slippery if it does rain as forecast though.The track is a mix of high speed open bike park style sections and forested technical sections. For a rider to do well here they will need to be strong in all areas of their riding.The high speed sections are going to deliver riders into some of the more technical sections at full speed, this will get interesting…This probably describes it best, some hard technical sections and some easier wide open sections. Mitch Delfs was estimating three to three and a half minutes for race runs?! The high overall speed maks it hard to estimate.Here Connor Fearon points out a line to Mitch Delfs and Luke Strobel, riders are going to come into this section super fast so speed isn’t the problem it’s the super tight left hander directly after the gap that is though…The tight left hander leads into this, a 50 metre rock garden…Expect mechanics to be flat out this week!The rocks just keep going…And going! You have to get this section right otherwise you are going to crash or lose all your momentum and struggle to get through the rest of the rocks.Once the riders get through the rocks the bottom section of the track is fast and wide open, in general the whole track is pretty fast!There was a lot of last minute preparation happening on the track today.Some sections on the track had seen a bit more work than some other sections… Pretty cool!Hafjell is a ski resort but this weekend the fans will be out for the downhill.If you read Connor Fearon’s Inside Info you will know what his plans for this number 31 are!No points for guessing whos bike this is! The name is on the top tube!To get epic just add rider! We are expecting some truly epic riding here in Norway, downhill247.com will be bringing it all to you!
Practice starts tomorrow with most riders pretty keen toget out on the track.A�The race is actually on Saturday, we will keep you covered all week long!
