MSA Race Report part 1.

Starting from the beginning! Todd Seplavy from IH met me at Logan on Thursday afternoon. Afer some quick lunch and a brew we boared literally the smallest plane I have ever been on! My ticket said row 9, which was the last row! Even more crazy is that when we landed, we immediately pulled a Boston-style U-Turn ON THE RUNWAY!! I guess they weren't expecting anyone else in behind us any time soon. This was my first time flying international, so the custom agents in Canadia figured they'd give me everything sans the rubber glove treatment. After 15 minutes of having all my stuff inspected (camera bag, laptop, etc) and explaining what every piece of equipment was for, we were finally off to the mountain!

We pimped a Green Yaris for the weekend:

The pits view from the e.13 tent:


It was pretty crazy how the mountains all started right from sea level. You had a crazy view of the river all along the drive, and from the top of MSA.
On the drive to the mountain:



Mount Ste Anne's course = Long, fast, long, fast, rocky, fast. Friday and Saturday it took me all of practice (9:30am to 3pm) to film and hike the course once. On Sunday I had the priveledge of hiking it twice! The top was open slopes, rocky, and damn fast. Most riders were lucky if they made it through the first two minutes without a flat! The top woods section consisted of some rocky sections, some tech berms (including one of the craziest s-turns I have ever seen!) and back out to the open slopes. The crowd favorite was definitely the downhill step-down jump into the berms, followed up by the high speed step down. Apparently, during his race run on Sunday, Sam Hill whipped the jump and tried to scare his Aussie buddies that were standing there!

Course pictures:





Greg Minaar and Andrew Neethling



Brendon Fairclough had a pretty scary crash in front of me on Friday so I had time to snap a pic of his Honda G-Cross bike while he took a breather. These puppies are CRAZY loud as you can see from my clips on Littermag.com. I guess thats what tons of money sounds like rolling down a hill.