Milka Wheels of Speed - Willingen, Germany

Most of the team (apart from Ruaridh who competing in a Scottish National back home and placing 2nd) competed in the the Downhill race at the huge bike festival in Willingen, Germany at the weekend. The festival is huge with all of Germanys MTB industry there with stands showing products from bikes to basically everything you can buy related to riding. It is like a massive outdoor bike show. The Downhill race is held on the track that used to hold a World Cup DH and 4X race on and it is always very competitive with a lot of the top world cup pro racers showing up because of the track with its big jumps and also the great prize money which is a ton more than a World Cup! I wonder why UCI can't provide as good prize money at the biggest races in the world? The racing is always super tight and a great spectacle for the people watching with times only differeing between hundredths of seconds. All the team did exceptionally well with Claire Buchar narrowly missing out on the win by the fastest DH woman in the world - Rachel Atherton by less than a 1/4 of a second. Matt, Chris and Matti where all in the top 10 and so close to the podium in times. Thanks to the organisers at Willingen for having the team at there great event once again. See you next year. Also a huge thank you to Kathy Sessler from the Santa Cruz Syndicate team for her photos. Final Results Men Aaron Gwin 1:50.06 Greg Minnaar 1:50.26 Andrew Neethling: 1:50.99 Dan Atherton 1:51.69 Filip Polc 1:52.03 Matt simmonds 1:52.03 Chris Kovarik 1:52.19 Steve Smith 1:52.55 Matti Lehikoinen 1:52.96 Florent Payet 1:52.99 Women Rachel Atherton 2:06.15 Claire Buchar 2:06.39 Antje Kramer 2:13.82 The team now heads over to Leogang in Austria for the 3rd round of the UCI World Cup this coming weekend. Nigel Page Team Manager - ChainReactionCycles/Intense Please keep up to date on the team at www.crcintense.com