World Cup Preperation - Dalby Forest

On the 25th April 2010 Chris Andrews is set to become the very first Orange Monkey rider to compete in a UCI World Cup, and what a place to do - A home race at the newly built Dalby Forest track.

World Cups are a pinnacle of every Cross Country riders dreams and for Chris it will be his first of many as a busy schedule takes him to two WC's and a National event all within the space of 3 tough weeks.

With all this in mind Chris took the road north to Dalby for a weekend of practice accompanied by his coach and fellow Orange Monkey Elite, Paul. The weather, as you would expect in northern England in March was raining hard which was perfect as the conditions would never be worse than what faced him this weekend... unless it snowed, now their's a thought!

Dalby is set in a beatuiful part of Yorkshire just outside the picturesque village of Thornton-Le-Dale and not too far from Pickering. We could immediately see that the organisers had been busy and concreted the entire start/finish area of the large arena field. The course starts with a long fireroad and short piece of singletrack to try and string the riders out before firing them over a jump and into the first piece of "real" singletrack. The two focal points on the course are Worry Gill and Medusa's Drop which will have the crowd on the edge of there seats come April when over 100 of the Worlds best storm towards it.

For Chris, this weekend was all about getting to know every single piece of course, the quickest lines, the smoothest trail, the right gearing, the braking points, everything that could give him an extra percentage come race day. As they went over the course with a fine toothcomb it was obvious that this was a course built for World class riders with steep drops, difficult uphills, it has it all!

The second day, the weather eased off and allowed Chris to spend some time looking at the tougher bits in more detail (without getting soaking wet). A difficult entry to Medusa's Drop and a tough steep uphill towards the end of the lap were the only things that caused some problems but after some timed runs they dialled it in and as they made their way back down the M1 it was clear that come April 25th Chris will have the advantage of knowing every bump, corner and stone of the Dalby World Cup course. I think Mr Absalon should be very worried indeed.