Most of you will probably have figured this out by now or no doubt heard it or read it, but yesterday was a damn good day for mountain biking. First up Hawkes Bay junior Brook McDonald became the Junior World Champion of downhill biking, which is pretty fantastic news. Almost as fantastic as Steve Peat winning his first World Championship. The first DH World Champs were in 1990, Steve Peat’s been racing the World Cup since 1993… 16 years is one hell of a long time to wait, and no one has come second more times than Peaty (2nd four times).
I didn’t catch any of it live as it was a pretty epic day in Wellington and getting to go to a brunch and Q and A with legendary F1 driver Chris Amon kind of won over staring at a computer screen. It was all part of an amazing exhibition at Te Papa in Wellington about the history of F1 racing. They have a huge collection of cars there like a McLaren MP4-21 (as driven by Räikkönen and de la Rosa) and a Ferrari F2004 as well as classics like a Cooper T51 (Check out the full list here). My brother (who coincidentally once turned down a job to work at McLaren Racing in the UK) informs me that their wind tunnel is utilised seven days a week 365 days of the year… Kind of makes Trek’s little wind tunnel trip seem insignificant.
But for those of you that don’t care for F1 cars there’s a great candid post race interview on vitalmtb.com with Steve Peat that’s well worth six minutes of your time. Patrick Fallon’s exclusive World Champs report should be with us soon.
