Nigel Page reports from Fort William

The 4X racing was fast and action packed. Our 2 4X riders Lewis Lacey and Lucas Mechura rode great all night. Lewis made it through to the 1/4 finals and then lined up on the gate for the semi final as current world champion Rafael Alvarez who was disqualified for running over a corner flag which you have to go inside of. Then after some confusion and complaining from the Alvarez team Lewis was taken off the gate and Alvarez was reinstated into the race. The UCI chief later told us that after studying the video footage, Alvarez did not ride through the flag as it had looked to the marshal stood right there! So anyway it was too late to look into this at the time as the semi finals were run and Lewis was out of the competition. He rode really well but it put a bit of a downer on our night. Lucas however cheered us all up by making it through to the 1/4 finals with Lewis where he rode an amazing race to second and made it through to the Semi's then his first ever final! He again rode a fantastic race getting a great gate from the outside and going into 3rd in the first corner. This is where he stayed all the way to the finish behind eventual winner Jared Graves and Roman Saladini in 2nd. So it was a great night for the team and the crowd were amazing, really getting behind all the riders. Jill Kintner also riding an Intense Tazer hard tail took the win in the women's competition, she rode fantastic all night. First up on Sunday was the women's downhill - Claire Buchar Kovarik, riding her new Intense 951, had a much better race this week finishing 8th. Sabrina Jonnier pretty much smashed the women's competition winning by over 9 seconds from Emmeline Rogot both from France. Chris Kovarik had a good ride for 14th and was also riding the 951. The new bike is great and with a bit more time and testing with some different set ups I think we and Intense are going to have another brilliant DH world cup race bike. Matt Simmonds finished 42nd gaining the team some valuable points. We had to feel so sorry for Ruaridh - he was pretty nervous for his semi final qualifying run as he wanted to do so well here in front of his home crowd, family and friends. Disaster struck his run as through no fault of his own he had a freak mechanical causing him to have no rear break on a very fast rough section causing him to have a big crash and ending his chances for the weekend - luckily he wasn't badly injured. Julien was not racing as he is still recovering from his hand operation but will be back in 2 weeks time for the 5th round at Maribour, Slovenia. Greg Minnaar of the Santa Cruz Syndicate team, won here in Fort William for the 2nd year in a row narrowly beating Sam Hill, a great ride by young New Zealander Sam Blenkinsop in 3rd, UKs Gee Atherton in 4th and Australia's Mick Hannah took the final podium position in 5th. Chris Watson and Michael Cowan from Chain Reaction Cycles who make our team possible made the trip over to watch the race - it is always nice to have these guys over and hopefully they can make it out to some more races soon. We are off to Germany next weekend for the Wheels of Speed downhill race in Willingen and then on to Maribour the week after. Nigel Page Team Manager - ChainReactionCycles/Intense www.CRCintense.com Images by Victor Lucas