My legs shivered uncontrollably. The warm up dashed along the fence at Paul Roos Gym didn’t do much to chase away the fresh morning chills. Mud oozed around my Larsens as I took my place in the start chute ready for race 4 in the Mazda Drifter MTN Ferdevco Series. As always the fanfare created an exciting atmosphere. The butterflies that had been hatching on the flight down to Cape Town were now desperate to exit my stomach. We proceeded to the start and were sent on our way up the tarmac through the late winter dawn of Stellenbosch.

Julien Absalon (Orbea) displayed fine form and well-honed technical skills as he dominated the elite men's cross country at the World Cup in Mont-Sainte-Anne. On the very first lap, he attacked his competition and left them behind to race for second.

Absalon wasn't originally planning on racing at Mont-Sainte-Anne. "After my bad race at worlds [where he DNF'ed - ed.], I changed my mind. I decided that it'd be better to do the World Cup here to keep racing on an international level and boost my confidence."

WORLD CUP DOWNHILL - Mt. Ste. Anne, Quebec Santa Cruz Syndicate had a great romp at the UCI World Cup downhill at Mt. Ste. Anne, Quebec today with Greg Minnaar taking the win in the men's race and becoming the new overall leader.  Josh Bryceland took over the overall lead in the junior men and placed 15th overall in elite, and the Syndicate keeps the lead in the overall team classification.  Steve Peat has been on every world cup podium this year and stood in 4th position today and Nathan Rennie had a solid run to finish 7th.

The week was short leading up to the race with just two days of practice before Saturday's race but we managed to squeeze in the time to attend what is sure to be the first of many Freecaster Grand Prix Kart races on Thursday night.

We arrived at Eston club just before sunrise , sitting in the mazda 5 waiting for the sun to warm up the cool air as we watched the more than 3000 riders stream in for the race. We couldn’t have asked for better racing weather !
 
With king of the mountain only being at the 3km mark, the racing was set to be hard from the word go. I decided to give it a shot and fortunately had a very good start, with Brandon and I leading the field through the first turn.