Hot, parching conditions scorched the Sea Otter downhill course while top downhill racers burned up the fast, dusty track beneath them. UK national champion, Tracy Moseley (Trek), covered some bad moves with hard pedaling while Mick Hannah (GT) succeeded in reversing last week's runner-up finish to Greg Minnaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate) by putting Minnaar in second instead.
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Mick Hannah
Photo: VeloNews/Brad Kaminski |
Both Hannah and Minnaar admitted to mistakes near the start of their runs; Hannah was just able to slice away more time on recovery than Minaar.
"My run started off reasonably well – I made a little bit of a bobble at the top but other than that, the rest of it was pretty good," Hannah said. "I didn't feel like I had enough – I knew I'd done good but I didn't think I'd stay ahead of Greg. He's really strong at the moment and he's coming off winning the World Cup last year but it worked out all right – it was only a tenth of a second but it worked out well."
Hannah likened Sea Otter's downhill course a bit to the one in Canberra, Australia, which is where the world mountain bike championships will take place later this year. With the world title clearly in focus, training for Hannah has been a mixture of BMX, road riding, and, of course, downhill.
Hannah's time to beat today was a white-hot 2:08.1
Absent from the podium was world downhill champion, Gee Atherton (Animal/Commencal), who suffered a crash that took him out of the podium chase. Atherton might have agreed with Greg Minnaar's comment after losing so narrowly to Hannah, "That's racing."
Power and fitness dominated downhill but despite her superlative skills, one racer became victim of her own racing talents. A fit, fast Melissa Buhl (KHS) looked to double her wins for the weekend, after having won yesterday's dual slalom but was delayed on her way to the top of the podium by the racer in front of her on the finishing stretch. A visibly frustrated Buhl finished .6 seconds off the winning pace of Moseley, who returned to Sea Otter this year after a four year break to collect the podium's top spot.
"On this track everyone is pretty equal at the top, there's not much technical stuff to separate you from everybody else so a lot of it comes down to who can put the pedal down where it needs to," Moseley said. "A track like this - where there's so much where you need to carry your speed - that's the important thing here: just staying smooth and carrying speed."
Despite unclipping on some jumps near the start, which burned time, Moseley sprinted to the finish with the best time of 2:21.6.
"I definitely wasn't too happy with the run but I tried to pedal hard where I could and I was obviously just good enough," Moseley said. "I think maybe it was unlucky for Melissa who got caught up with someone so maybe I was pretty lucky with that. But it was a good race and I'm pretty happy with a win at Sea Otter."
Top 3 Women:
- Tracy Moseley (Trek) 2:21.6
- Melissa Buhl (KHS) 2:22.4
- Kathy Pruitt (Jamis) 2:27.7
Top 3 Men:
- Mick Hannah (GT) 2:08.1
- Greg Minnaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate) 2:08.2
- Andrew Neethling (Trek) 2:08.8
For a complete list of results, click HERE.