We are Australian so we might be a little biased but the Cairns world cup was one of the best we have witnessed in some time! There were some truly amazing highs (as well as a few lows – after all that is racing), the day kicked off with a short practice session in the morning before the crowd started filing through the gates and lining the course.
The juniors kicked off proceedings and there was high expectations with a large number of riders all keen to impress at their home race. In the end impress they did with 4 out of the top 5 spots going to Australians. In 5th was Josh Clark, 4th was Jackson Frew, 3rd was Harry Bush and 2nd was Remy Morton. The win went to Matt Walker from Great Britain.
Next up were the senior females and it was evident who the crowd was cheering for, the home town Hannah! In this case Tracey, she put down a stomping run and finished second, it was Rachel Atherton that took the win but boy was the crowd lapping Tracey up!
At 2pm it was time for the men to start their race runs, 80 riders, one winner! Here are some observations from the afternoon;A�Stevie Smith got a flat front tyre, Greg Minnaar commented he didn’t have any issues with his run but still had a result that wasn’t up to his standards, much the same for Gee Atherton and Sam Hill was battling an illness in the week leading up to the race finishing 28th.
Without doubt one of the highlights of the weekend for us was the result of one man – Josh Button – after having stepped away from racing World Cups since 2012 Josh has been keeping things low key, until Cairns that was! He put in a stomping run to claim the hot seat from Graeme Mudd and he was sitting there for a very long time…At first we were hoping he wouldn’t get knocked out of the top 20, then the top 15 before finally the top 10… then we began to dream, a podium?! We all knew JB had the skills, then sure enough there were 4 riders left and Josh was in range. In the end he did claim one – 5th place, JB you’ve done it again!
There were still 4 riders to go, Loic Bruni was on the hot seat with AAron Gwin unable to better his time, there were just 2 riders left, both Australian. Sik Mik Hannah knows Cairns like the back of his hand having grown up here, with sister Tracey coming close in the women’s everyone was hoping mic could finish one step higher. He put in a cracking run but ended up in second place. This left Troy Brosnan as the last rider on course, the whole way down the times were so close, it looked like he might have done it just before he crossed the line where the timing board showed he was just 0.493 seconds down! In the process this handed Loic his first ever world cup win.
We have a smorgasbord of images to show you guys from the week so check back for those soon.
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