Canada Cup #1 was the test bed for the new Bromont, Canada World Cup course due to be run in July. The course was dry, loose and fast as hell. Rain moved in Saturday night, but didn't even manage to keep the dust down, let alone make the course slippery. The upper sections of the course were run on a couple of established trails, making them hardpacked and flowey. Everything below that was fresh cut, with work finishing on the Thursday before the race. The major features of the course were a couple of rock stepdowns and a massive slick rock segment, all right under the lift on the steepest section of the mountain. It made for a great spectator location, with a couple of hundred fans lining the course in this section on race day.
The lower sections were fast wide fireroad that flirted in and out of the woods on brand new, deep loamy single track with a few quite technical off camber tight corners that gobbled up more than a few riders in practice and early race runs.
3 Mojo Orange team members were in attendance, as well as 2 Transcend Magazine Orange riders. Both Junior Expert Transcend Orange riders did well, with Emmanuel D'Aoust in 11th and James Jeannet in 13th. Both riders crashed in their runs and blew corners higher up on the course, but still managed to salvage decent runs, 9 and 11 seconds off the lead.
The Mojo Orange riders had a rough start to the season with Jamie Biluk being the top performer in 17th, 14 seconds back. Jeff Beatty was 22nd, 15 seconds back. Fraser Britton managed to hip check a tree in an upper section of the course at full speed and get thrown from his bike. He just cruised home to the finish after letting the rider behind him catch up and go by.
Emmanuel D'Aoust - Transcend Magazine Orange
Jamie Biluk - Mojo Orange
Beatty, Biluk and Britton head to the US open of MTB next week and are then off to Europe for the next 2 rounds of the World Cup.
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