Chris Kovarik: World Cup Blog

This past weekend saw the latest Downhill World Cup go down in Switzerland, and despite having some of the most ruthless conditions this year, Unit athletes Chris Kovarik and Claire Buchar scored some great results. Claire with a 7th and Chris a 9th. Check out Chris' blog from the event below...

This weekend I was in Switzerland/Champery for the 4th round of the downhill mtb World Cup, the weekend was going to be a tough one for everyone as we all know the track is the steepest, gnarliest on the circuit and plus it usually thunderstorms in the afternoon just to make it worse.

My practice started off well on thursday as the track was dry and it was easy to get a feel of the bike, on a track like this you barely have to take a pedal stroke because its so gravity fed so it was cool rolling the whole track and then hitting the high speed doubles at the finish.

Friday was qualifying and sure enough the rain came down and it was on and off all day just to keep the track slippery as hell. Practice went well, i was loving the muddy conditions, i got my lines down and i was running full spike tyres with low pressures to get as much grip as i could in the thick mud. During my run i hit a turn only to get halfway around it to find it had been blown out so my front wheel slid down off the edge and i went over the bars, i crawled back up and got on my bike with a hand full of mud and managed to qualify 27th.

Saturday race day i was pumped and ready to conquer the beast of a mountain, that had a number of riders helicoptered off the track with broken bones, cuts and concussions. The track was still a mudfest as it had rained all night and at one stage during practice it was like riding a river down the track. On my second practice run that morning i hit one of the big doubles at the bottom of the course, i slid up the take-off and was whipped out but landed too sideways and got high sided off the bike at high speed, i was a train wreck wrapped in course tape and mud. I got to the pits to discover i had a 2 inch gash in my shin to the bone and a corked calf muscle, i got it cleaned up by the medics, went back to the pits and geared up for the final.

I got to the top of the mountain a little earlier to give my leg a good warm up on the wind trainer so it wasnt so stiff before my run. All was good i took off out of the start gate and rode pretty solid start to finish not stalling and without many mistakes or coming off the bike. In the end i finished 9th on the day and was pumped to finally get a top 10 which is my first this year, i'm hoping my leg heals up before next weeks world cup race in Italy / Val Di Dol which is another crazy track!

My team also won team of the day, making the most points out of all the riders so we all got to stand on the podium and spray a little champagne!

Later!

• By Allan H