Nigel Page reports from UCI World Cup In Maribor, Slovenia

The team has just got back to www.winterandsummer.com in Morzine, France for a 2 week break from racing before we head over to Alpe d'Huez for the crazy Mega week and race the Mega Avalanche. This will be the first time most of the team have competed in the race with everyone being both excited and nervous at the same time. We will be using our super trick Intense Tracers for the race, which will be a great bikes for this really long course. The Nissan UCI World Cup in Maribor didn't go as well as last year - Julien who finished 3rd (2007) and 2nd (2008) always excels on this track but is still out with his hand injury... a real shame as we were hoping for a win this year! The track was really rough this year with lots of holes and tons of tree roots. It was riding fast in practice with the hot weather making it very dry and dusty. Saturday (qualifying day) brought the down pours, the heavens opened and the gondola had to be closed due to thunder and lightening. Qualifying was moved to early sunday morning with the finals in the afternoon as scheduled. Even with the terrible weather, the 4X went ahead on the Saturday night on a very muddy track... Lucas Mechura had made his best qualifying run to date, coming in 7th giving him gate choice for a good few rounds and Lewis Lacey qualified easily in the 20s. Things were looking good as Lucas blasted out of the gate in his first heat with a great start and getting the power down the first straight but he drifted wide on the muddy open first turn and he was pushed into second. Then disaster struck towards the bottom of the course - the course was too muddy on one of the jump sections so they had to divert the track around them, with some open flat corners - as Lucas went into the first of those new corners (on the brakes to avoid from sliding out) a rider in 3rd made a kamikaze move on him taking both of them down and allowing the 4th place rider through to the next round. So that was Lucas out of the competition in the first heat. He was very disappointed after placing 3rd at the last round in Fort William - but that is 4X racing! Lewis Lacey had a good start in his first heat and was in 2nd all the way down to the final straight but got cross rutted on the take off of the first jump which made him come up short and not giving him enough speed for the huge double. He had to ride this and the rider in 3rd behind him was able to jump the double and passed Lewis for 2nd. So no riders in the final for us this week unfortunately. The semi finals and final ended up being very exciting and a great race to watch. Final results were as follows: Men 4X 1 Joost WICHMAN 2 Jared GRAVES 3 Roger RINDERKNECHT 4 Romain SALADINI Women 4X 1 Caroline BUCHANAN 2 Melissa BUHL 3 Anneke BEERTEN 4 Jill KINTNER Qualifying for the downhill saw over 200 men competing for the top 80 to make the finals in the afternoon. As the schedule for the DH finals was set for the TV, practice had to start very early. 7.00am on a muddy, slippery and dangerous track - this woke everyone up pretty quickly! Qualifying kicked off with the women. Claire qualified 10th and also managed joint 10th place for the finals in the afternoon - so another pretty good result for Claire. Chris and Ruaridh struggled a bit in qualifying not finding their flow and speed on the rough slippery track, but making it through easy enough for the afternoon finals. Matt Simmonds had a good run even though he slid off the course in one section he still managed his first top 20 run of the year. As the finals came around it was evident that the track was drying out very quickly so it was decision time with the tires. Cut spikes or dry's? All the guys opted for dry's. With the course narrowed from last year, Chris and Ruaridh again struggled to find their rhythm and ended up with disappointing results by their own standards. Matt was on a good run but got too wild coming into the famous rock garden - that is so dangerous if you crash - he got pinged off one rock into another and rode a big section one footed and was lucky to stay on. He recovered and went as hard as he could to the end but couldn't emulate his top 20 qualifying run and ended up 35th. The track caused a few more big guns to crash and puncture, including fastest qualifier Gee Atherton who crashed on the final stages and Steve Peat who got a rear puncture. Fabien Barel pulled out a mind blowing run of guts skill and determination (only his second race back after his bad knee injury at the first race of the season) to take the win just in front of Sam Hill and Greg Minnaar. Men DH 1 Fabien BAREL 2 Samuel HILL 3 Greg MINNAAR 4 Justin LEOV 5 Brendan FAIRCLOUGH 6 Fabien PEDEMANAUD 7 Steve SMITH 8 Matti LEHIKOINEN 9 Mitchell DELFS 10 Andrew NEETHLING 35 Matthew SIMMONDS - Chain Reaction Cycles.com/Intense 46 Chris KOVARIK Chain - Reaction Cycles.com/Intense 55 Ruaridh CUNNINGHAM - Chain Reaction Cycles.com/Intense Women DH 1 Sabrina JONNIER 2 Emmeline RAGOT 3 Floriane PUGIN 4 Céline GROS 5 Mio SUEMASA 6 Myriam NICOLE 7 Emilie SIEGENTHALER 8 Fionn GRIFFITHS 9 Tracy MOSELEY 10 Miriam RUCHTI 10 Claire BUCHAR - Chain Reaction Cycles.com/Intense Nigel Page Team Manager - ChainReactionCycles/Intense www.CRCintense.com