We arrived in la Bresse after a days drive from Lyon. The town was small and not a lot seemed to be going on. The races all seem real desolate and abandoned before and after the races is weird to see.

Anyway me and Sam were dropped at the top on the track on Monday morning  with our xc bikes and we found our way down the side of the hill, the track was not marked out but the terrain and hill looked like it could produce a good looking track, and we were right.

The week went so slow up towards the race, we were just lounging around our condo not really getting lot done apart from looking forward to dinner and watching movies, lots of them.

Finally Thursday came around and we got to walk the taped out track. Me and Sam were both walking down with a big grin on out faces, finally a track with out a 10 minute pedal in it. It was steep and fast with drops and rough turn down the track, reminded me of an outdoor moto track, which made me exited.

Practice went well, I felt good on my bike and the bike felt real good too. We just played with the shock a bit and I felt ready for the race.

Qualifying was on the Saturday, its normally on the Sunday before the race but it’s a different rule that has come in this year.  I quite like it, it shows your speed early and you get time to work on it if your not up to race pace.

I qualified 6th, pretty solid only a few second off the win so I was happy with how it was going.

Race day, practice in the morning was good, dialed all my lines in and was feeling confident and ready.  We were warming up at the top and spots of rain were falling, think this might of scared a few people but I was still smiling , I had been using spikes all weekend and liked the wet conditions.  Turns out it didn’t really rain too much, not enough to really affect the track at all. Started off my run and felt good all the way down, with  a massive crowd cheering the whole way down the track its not easy to forget your in a world cup race run. Crossed the finish line to see Greg Minnaar getting up from out the hot seat which is always a good sign.  I sat down and waited for the other riders. Sam came down after qualifying in 4th and knocked me out by 1.8 seconds. I really didn’t care though, I was guaranteed 5th. I finally finished in 4th ahead of George Atherton so I was happy. The podium was real cool iv not been on there for a few year so it was good to get a taste of that again.