Canberra World Champs Day 1 - Practice

Rennie looks super fresh and strong! Hope he podiums.

not liking the new sydicate bikes green and blue, the reds were much nicer. also agree with walshe-boi, canberra seems too easy for them, the competition will get harder meaning going faster will be harder, but even team specialized are not using their dh bikes, id much rather win on a dh bike than a trail bike.imo

I think it's cool that specialized isn't use dh bikes, to me that prove you can have a short travel bike and rip on it just as good as a big dh bike

Top Gun Music - Take My Breathe Away...

id say if gregs bike had the red boxxer itd be dope. itd also be hilartious if sam wins cuz then theyd have to put rainbow stripes on the sx instead of the demo haha

in austrailia im guessing

yep..im goin 2 see the world champs!!!YAY!!

weird to see everyone kinda talking about their team and not there country, isnt that what Worlds is about?

greg minnaars v10 paint job looks sweet

totally agree with downhillrider441, 100%

yeah, dunno what the course exactly looks like but all I can see are hips hips hips...isn't it air dh? put there Lopes then

The same people still win no matter what the course type.

Well, It's maybe not difficult as other track, but they're carrying a LOT of speed, so it's not that easy.
riders as to be in shape to pedal trough this course !

My opinion is that they should have differnt tracks every year, so it doesn't get stale. I mean some of these guys have ridden some of the tracks a couple hundred times. Time to mix it up and give everyone a fair shake.

the track is actually very slipperey (no traction anywhere) quite rough and very high speed ... there are still quite a few steep sections and the run-ins to most of the big things ar cover with watremelon sized rocks...

The track actually looks like quite good fun from this side of the interweb. But seriously to all the people who want to rip on the course layout or design, do keep in mind that regardless of what it looks like it's gonna be the same for everyone.

its gonna be taken out of the wc circuit next year, where it will be held at eagle park

Yeah, but i mean it shouldnt have happened this year,
especially at world's,

Yeah it should defo be scrapped, not steep enough or challenging enough for top riders and some of them aren't even using full on downhill bikes.

They should make the US open a WC instead. It's a lot more challenging than that track

uh, no.

I have ridden both tracks. YES US open track has got bigger jumps e.c.t, the Stromlo track is alot more harder (I think)

Glen Jacobs has also said that when they started the Mount Stromlo project, they presented 10 different tracks. But because the UCI wanted all the tracks to end in the same spot, they had to use this one. This was there LEAST favourite option and there is talk of another steeper, rockier DH trail donw the other side.

race? this is the first practice day :S

It'l be interesting to see how Brendan and Sam get on riding the SX trails!

Yep - for the world champs the course should be a real challange , the riders should not be ok riding short travle bikes because it should be a test of their ability to deal with some gnarly stuff too!In my opinion the track isnt quite up to standard!

Agreed. It looks like it will be a good race, but not world champs caliber. The fact that several riders are using single crown forks is definitely interesting, but again, not wc material. I want to see a track that requires every inch of travel from a big bike and the best riders in the world hanging on for dear life and white knuckling it to the bottom.

I do not agree with you guys at all!

That world champs should test the riders i agree with but the part with the track being no world champs standard course i do nor agree with. Last years world champs at val'd i sole tested the riders technical ability to the max and hardly any pedaling, this track at canberra tests the riders to but in a different way, their physical strenght, their ability to carry speed and their ability to pedal. I think it's good to see som variation of track so that every rider must be good on all kinds of tracks. Imagine of all tracks were real steep and technincal, Hill would destroy them, same can be said if all tracks were flat and pedaly, minnarr would smoke the competition.

My opinion is based on the videos and photos i have seen from the track and i have not seen the track in real life.

Yes Canberra isn't the best World champs track in the world but lucky the 2010 world cup season will be the best in years.The gnarly'st tracks on the world cup circuit will be ridin witch are Champery,Val Di Sole,Maribor,Fort William and World Champs at MSA.

anyone know the estimated run time for the race? seems short.

I think Greg's paint job was made to rep South African colors or somethin. It is World Champs after all

yer i think that it's the national colours of south africa and the uk on the syndicate bikes.

oh, ok that makes sense

i think that he is riding a specially made frame. It looses the adjustable dropout and headtube angle and it is made of lighter gage tubing. he also has the option of running the shorter travel supreme racing frame.

Or at least thats what it says in MBUK.

ahhh yeah... i forgot it had the feature on the worlds in MBUK... i think it said that we didn't know though... because isn't peaty on the SC Ibis?

dunno it looks like a v 10 but i don't know what the SC ibis looks like (it could be the driver 8 though)

ibis, driver 8, v10.... they all look pretty much the same, probably the driver 8 then

Ibis is a make of bike, not a model made by santa cruz.
If peaty and minaar are not riding v10s they will be riding driver 8's although its very difficult to tell them apart as they look almost identical. Anything we see now though may not reflect on what they ride in the actual race.

yer i was gonna say to pasty that i though ibis was a make of bike not and sc. That would explain why i had never heard of it.

Im pretty sure they're using V-10's on facebook peaty posted a pic saying about his mint V-10.

I think its pretty cool that some are using trail bikes.

ahh right... i swear i read somewhere that there was a santa cruz ibis... probably got it mixed up with the driver 8 somewhere in an MBUK review

no worries. They do have a some similar frame shapes though.

Slam - Pendulum at start but mixed with we will rock you by queen.
Then a remix of the final countdown by europe.

Why you wan to know though i don't know because the music was rubbish.
The normal versions are way better, although 'tfc' is always crap

Shutup goose, some of the pros have said that sort of thing, but if you actually watched the finals race (which I doubt you did) then you would have seen that the large majority of the track is actually made up of some pretty technical stuff which takes a hell of alot of skill to ride. Once the track started to cut up a bit it became very good, maybe it isn't as good as say Fort Bill and it did have it's flat sections, but to say that it only requires pedalling is absolute bullshit.

And I forgot to add that Steve peat won the race on a f*cking V10 which, the last time I checked isn't exactly the most efficient pedaller (10 inches of travel) compared to some of the shorter travel rigs other people were running.