Day 66: Brits reign at the Worlds

5 Sep 2011

By David Scorer

Day 66: Great British results and the shambles at Champéry. As predicted, a miserable rainy day for the main event. But what a great response from the British team, with Manon Carpenter taking gold in the junior girls, Rachel Atherton getting silver in the senior girls, and Danny Hart putting in the most incredible run in the driving rain to win the mens by a staggering margin. Totally in a league of his own!

The downside was the rather chaotic organisation. No sign boards, no information stewards etc, and worst of all no clearly organised approach to getting spectators to or from the event. With no apparent park-and-ride we were actually directed to Les Crosets, a ski village on the mountain some 600m above Champéry. From there we had to take a chairlift up even higher, to nearly 2000m altitude, then do a 25 minute alpine hike down the other side of the mountain (again without signs or stewards) which brought us out at the top of the DH course. And from there you could take the chairlift down to the finish arena where we had been trying to get to all along. Of course at the end of the day it was the whole thing in reverse. Daft. But worth it just for that run of Danny’s – something special to watch if you check it out on Freecaster.

Blatant favouritism here but we’ll leave you with an image of our fellow Welshie Manon storming to 1st place in juniors.

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