ChainReactionCycles Team Report From Mont-Sainte-Anne

Round 6 was on the famous Mont-Sainte-Anne, Canadian track. One of the favorites with the riders and most definitely up there with the toughest most demanding tracks on the circuit for both the bike and rider. The team did really well this weekend with Chris Kovarik placing 6th in the mens final and just narrowly missing out on a podium position to Fabien Barel by less than a second. Matt Simmonds placed 21st - his best World Cup result so far this year - and Ruaridh came 41st getting us some good team points. Julien is still out with his hand injury which is a real shame, but unfortunately that's racing and it is hard to stay injury free for a whole season. Team Chain Reaction Cycles.com/Intense is up to 8th in the rankings, with Julien out, we are doing pretty good. Congratulations to Aaron Gwin from the USA for getting his first World Cup podium with a 3rd place and the first USA mens podium in a long time. Also to the legendary Shaun Palmer who did his first World Cup in about 10 years and at 40 years old he qualified for the mens final finishing in a very respectable 75th back on board his Intense bike. In the the women's race, newly crowned Canadian champion Claire Buchar qualified well in 7th, back in contention for a possible podium position. However, Claire was having a good run looking like she would finish in 7th or 8th according to the timing board but just in the last technical wood section only about 30 seconds from the finish she caught a rock with her front wheel causing a crash and she went down pretty hard. Claire got back up and carried on to the finish and managed to salvage some good points placing 13th. In the 4X Lucas Mechura had a huge crash in practice just before qualifying, going down really hard piling his head into a huge rock. He was very lucky not to suffer a bad injury. With a pretty dazed head he had to take it steady on his qualifying run and managed to make it through into the top 32 but having to go from the outside gate in the heats. Lucas' gates and first straight were amazingly fast and he took the win in the first round pretty easily. In his 1/4 final round Lucas again got the hole-shot from the outside but got taken out by Guido Tschugg and they both went down. Lucas got up quickly and was catching for 2nd place but got a rear puncture in the rock garden so that was the end of the race for him. Thanks to both JP's from the Canadian Intense distributors for helping us out all week and to Jeff Steber from Intense cycles for making the trip out to the race. Mens DH results 1. Sam Hill 4.38.44 2. Steve Peat 4.41.48 3. Aaron Gwin 4.42.91 4. Gee Atherton 4.43.51 5. Fabien Barel 4.44.63 6. Chris Kovarik 4.45.53 21. Matt Simmonds 4.53.66 41. Ruaridh Cunningham 5.00.18 Womens DH results 1. Sabrina Jonnier 5.26.50 2. Emmeline Ragot 5.30.29 3. Tracey Moseley 5.31.27 4. Celine Gros 5.36.41 5. Florianne Pugin 5.36.71 13. Claire Buchar 5.56.52 Mens 4X results 1. Jared Graves 2. Rafael Alvarez De Lara Lucas 3. Tomas Slavik 4. Roger Rinderknecht Womens 4X results 1. Anneke Beerten 2. Fionn Griffiths 3. Joanna Petterson 4. Jill Kintner Nigel Page Team Manager - ChainReactionCycles/Intense www.CRCintense.com Photo - Victor Lucas