Internet at Fort William has been spotty at best today so we've been a little slow getting all our images. Here is a gallery of todays best photos from
Colin Meagher. |
| Mitch Ropalato and Curtis Keene chewing the fat pre quali day practice. |
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| Andy Ward working over Cam Cole's Lapierre DH Machine. |
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| Newness: Sam Blenkinsop's new lid gets a custom fit. |
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| Stevie Bell, Gee's wrench, works on wheels at Ft Bill. |
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| Did I mention that this place is a wheel wrecker? This is not one of the Atherton's wheels either, but it doesn't matter whose wheel it is really; this place just eats 'em for breakfast. |
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| Ben Reid on course out of the new start hut. |
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| Top drag racer of the day--if you can call Ft Bill a drag race. Gwin was looking "on" from the very beginning of the day. |
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| Athertons. It was good to see Dan out on the track again. |
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| Cross winds on this board walk will damn near take you off the path and into the heather. |
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| Chris Ball, a former legit World Cup DH Racer in his own right now works as a technical delegate for the UCI, making sure that things run smoothly. |
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| Practice run with Blenki on his six: MS-Evil's Brook McDonald. |
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| Dropping in again... It's meticulous attention to detail that sets racers like Beaumont apart from that guy you know who rides really, really fast. In South Africa, he raced a national XC race in baggy shorts on a 6" bike and got 16th. In an XC... WTF? |
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| Scottish cycling fans will do anything to keep the midges away. |
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| Down time. Photographer Keno Derleyn of France kills time course side looking over his "to do" list of riders to shoot. |
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| Getting warmed up... |
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| Rachel Atherton: "I visualize every track from top to bottom. It really does help me focus. A couple times I haven't been able to get the whole course done in my head, and I've always crashed at that part of the track or had a major mistake of some kind." |
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| Racing to qualify at the 2011 UCI MTB World Cup DH in Fort William, Scotland |
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| Minnaar on track. |
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| Nick Beer with a big off the bike. A bruised hand may have him out for the Final tomorrow. |
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| Oscar Harnstrom--somedays it's just not your lucky day. His tire bead pulled out. No flat, but no qualifying, either. |
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| Massive bomb holes began developing, wreaking even more havoc on rider's wheels. |
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| Lapierre recently acquired Loic Bruni, son of a French DH legend. First World Cup and he qualified... not too shabby. |
