Day 8: Practice with Nicolas Vouilloz and Ophélie David

7 Jul 2011

Day 8: Nico and Ophélie show us how it’s done. We mentioned yesterday that the bottom section of the qualifying course for the Mega has changed this year. So today we thought what better way to check out the new sections of trail than with the mountain bike ambassadors of Alpe d’Huez, Nicolas Vouilloz and Ophélie David. If you don’t know who they are then you’re reading the wrong blog, but just in case you are new to biking then we’ll fill you in. Nicolas is the 10x (yes that’s ten times) UCI World Downhill Mountain Bike Champion. And Ophélie is the reigning 6-times ski-cross world champion who also happens to be awesome on a bike. Both have won the Megavalanche event before, so were the perfect hosts for the day. But have you ever tried to follow professionals down a difficult section of trail? It’s not easy, but Dan gave it a go – check out the video below. Unfortunately Tim had gone down a different trail so missed the pics for this; he had too satisfy himself with shooting other riders with great views of the town in the background.

We also spent some time on the trails with Oscar and Philip from Dolekop.com in the Czech Republic. They have an awesome up and coming bike park scene out there so it’s worth dropping those guys a line if you are planning a visit. They know their stuff. The dust is getting pretty severe now so we are definitely in need of a bit of rain. Even with only 1 or 2 riders just in front you it’s almost impossible to see the trail at all. You either back off, which is not really an option as it’s supposed to be a race and there will be others right on your tail anyway, or you just hit it and hope.

In the late afternoon our machine of a photographer Tim was out yet again carrying his 20kg pack of tripods, flashes, lenses etc up the hill to get some more pics, driven by the fear of the weather coming in over the next couple of days. Some of the best will follow on tomorrow.

Finally, it was the Mega press conference this evening so we went along to see what the pros had to say. Most of the chat was about the objectives of the re-routed qualifier course – driven by 2 aims. First, to revive the spirit of downhill racing for both the main event and the quali. This meant running the mega down a section of last years quali course in order to cut out a big up and down section in the lower part of last years mega. And second to “bring the racing back to the people”. Running the quali course through town enables so many more people to see the action without having to trek up the hill. Nice idea so we are hoping for lots of spectators tomorrow. Qualifying races start about 10 I think – should probably go and find out…

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