Peaty 5th, Hill Wins With A 5 Second Margin in Schladming

After rain early in the week, riders were greeted with a beautiful sunny day for the downhill finals at the Nissan UCI World Cup Downhill held in the charming town of Schladming, Austria. Sam Hill continues to dominate with a commanding win margin 5.14 seconds ahead of 2nd place Gee Atherton. The Honda boys come 3rd and 4th with Minnaar just .05 seconds ahead of Lehikoinen. Santa Cruz Syndicate's Steve Peat rounds out the podium and Nathan Rennie comes 8th. Hill leads the overall with 807 points and Peat second with 639 points. Here's how the week unfolded: In this idyllic setting the downhill course is long and fast and the racers love it. The spectators enjoy being up on the mountain, picking wild blueberries, listening to the nearby cow bells and watching the racers speed by and take the occasional tumble in the new woods section filled with roots. After Saturday's practice the Syndicate boys had this to say about the track: Rennie says, "The track has a new section in there that's a whole bunch of roots and stuff and it's pretty difficult to ride. It looks like the weather is going to be good tomorrow and hopefully the roots will dry up and make it a little easier on everyone. Besides that the track is getting pretty beat up because we started off in the mud and then all the braking bumps are getting really deep now and it makes the track very physical. I only did three runs today because it was so physical, then I walked the track to get my stuff all sorted out. Racing is tomorrow and hopefully I have some good lines going. I looked and I was concentrating and such so we'll see how it goes." Peaty said, "It's real good on the track, the new sections are good on it and they're technical. They were hard to get through, but they made them easier by chopping some roots out. Everything feels good, and with the track drying out it's going to be a lot faster tomorrow." Qualifier: It was not a surprise to see Sam Hill in the number one qualifying position and he set the benchmark breaking the 4-minute mark with a 3:58.39. Gee Atherton was the only other rider to crack 4 minutes with a 3:59.07. Fabien Barel comes 3rd at 4:02.43, Matti Lehikoinen and Greg Minnaar round out the top five. Rennie finishes 8th at 4:05.44 and says, "That was my first 'give it a go run'. Nothing fancy." Peat fell off in the woods and his 4:12.38 gets him into 17th. Josh Bryceland, wearing the junior's leader jersey, had a fine run with a 4:08.85, placing 12th in the qualifier. He says, "It went good, I stayed on and hit all my lines. I let it go in a few bits and was fairly steady in the harder sections." Race Run: Peaty comes down and takes the hotseat from Marc Beaumont, to be expected after his marginal qualifier. Knowing he made a big mistake in his race run he knew it wouldn't stick. He says, "I was anxious to do well after the qualifier. I started out, then my front end pushed out in a turn and I put my foot down to stay up and I came to a complete stop. My time was close to Greg and Matti, so that mistake really cost me." Josh Bryceland crashed 3 times in his race run and was disappointed after having such a good qualifier. Rennie said, "I didn't get going well, and I was all over the place, and in the wrong places. I'm pretty happy to be in the top 10 with that run." PRO MEN'S FINAL RESULTS: 1. HILL Samuel 3:51.44 2. ATHERTON Gee GBR 3:56.58 +5.14 3. MINNAAR Greg RSA 3:56.96 +5.52 4. LEHIKOINEN Matti FIN 3:57.01 +5.57 5. PEAT Steve GBRSANTA CRUZ SYNDICATE 3:57.81 +6.37 6. VAZQUEZ LOPEZ David 3:57.93 +6.49 7. FAIRCLOUGH Brendan 3:58.13 +6.69 8. RENNIE Nathan AUSSANTA CRUZ SYNDICATE 4:00.27 +8.83 9. BEAUMONT Marc GBRTEAM MBUK SANTACRUZ 4:01.39 +9.95 10. REID Ben IRL 4:01.82 + 10.38 www.santacruzbicycles.co.uk