Well, the Singapore National champs wasn’t the only “Kind of a big deal around here” event going down over the weekend… Yip, further north a bit and there was some next level shit taking place in the form of the UCI Mountain Bike World Champs.
Now, this isn’t about to be a post with a million tales of dreams, hopes, training, focusing for one day and the season culminating in glory… There are a host of websites for that, I suggest pink bike, no, instead I will focus on one moment. After watching the two victories happen that afternoon which were on my ‘To do’ list, there was only one more win that I wanted out of Sunday evening: For Ratboy to take the DH World Champs jersey home on the new V10c, thus doing the double after the recent World Cup win.
Sure, I would have loved to have Blenki take the jersey back to NZ, but ultimately this was about Ratboy taking the Rainbow stripes back into the Syndicate pit for a 3rd year in a row. I know that it was a mental World Champs DH final, the broken chain hot seat, Sam Hill way up when he went over the bars, rider after top rider making little chance ending mistakes. But I was waiting for one run to come. Rat time!
I literally freaked out watching his run, the most excited/feverish I have been watching a race all year. Up at split one! FUCK YES!!! Nerves piling on like a gang bang that’s gone terribly awry… Up at split 2!!! COME ON!!! Through the final rock garden! He HAS it I thought, all he has to do is clear that final bridge jump, which is a piece of piss for these guys… Right? Bulldog had scrubbed that fucker shiny clean, so surely the rat would kill it…
Wrong
You could see he had gone big, which meant that by not scrubbing and missing the ramp he was coming down HOT from a looong way up… I’m not much of an expert on guessing distance, but someone did mention 25 feet to flat. FUCK… Just think that through for a moment? The result? DOOM:
The rat trap
One broken/dislocated foot on landing… Can you imagine the pain? Can you imagine the inner monologue in that split second when in sight of the line, able to see that you were up at the last split and then realising that you could no longer bear weight or pedal to the line? What an absolute dose of insane mental and physical torture… I was agar… To say ‘gutted’ would be a disgusting understatement worthy of a slapping. Rolling in 2nd, unable to stand and the prized World Cup/Champs double gone… Cycling can be a cruel bitch some times, this was one of those moments:
Silver medal after this happening – Mad respect, how many people would have rolled over and died right there
Yes, epic respect for Ratboy and Dirty healing vibes… The Go PRO footage is even more impressive, wait to the end where he fits the deck, how he didn’t scream in pain is beyond me. This is best watched in HD:
Love the conversation with Greg Minnaar at the end, classic shit… Just goes to show, at the end of the day, its about your mates that you roll with and there is no better example of that than how these dudes rally together. Get well soon Josh and take what is rightfully yours next year!
Oh yeah… Apparently there was an XC race and some French dude on a Full Suspension bike won. If you own a hard tail, fucking burn it ASAP.
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