Hello,

From perfect weather and a smoother-than-ever track to heavy fog and a more-brutal-than-ever track, this weekend’s opening DH World Cup round had all the hallmarks of a classic Fort William race.

Our yearbook photographers Sven, Boris and Seb were trackside to capture all the magic, as were several of our writers and spotters.

We’ve put together a collection of Fort William notes, links and snapshots below.

Hope you enjoy scanning through.

Cheers,

James
+ the Misspent Summers team

PRODUCT OF THE WEEK: DOWNHILL YEARBOOK ‘23

WILD AND WILDER: Notes from a foggy Fort William World Cup 2024

• Read our pre-race notes here
• Full results and series standings here
• Watch the highlights here
• Listen to Sven’s post-race chit chats in our latest Long ‘Views show, with interviews including Vali Höll, Loic Bruni, Troy Brosnan, Finn Iles, Myriam Nicole, Luca Shaw, Nina Hoffmann and Tahnée Seagrave
• We’re supporting Phil Atwill’s Propain Positive team this year. In exchange, Phil – always the character – is sending us uniquely descriptive audio reports from the races. Find out about the lost washing up bowl, driving over the parking attendant’s foot and a rough-as-hell course here
• Suspension: Analog lockouts, Flight Attendant, moveable idler pulleys, mysterious settings switches – at Fort William at least, it seems you need something custom to be in for the win
• Word from above? Finn Iles and Bruni both mentioned their ‘Specialized bike’ in identical wording at least once in their finish line TV interviews. Will there be a tidal wave of riders following suit with added value for their sponsors at round two?
• Correction: On Friday we said Bruni has two elite World Cup series titles to his name, but he of course has three: 2019, 2021, 2023
• Debrief: Listen to the Downtime Podcast post-race show with presenter Chris Hall, Intense Factory Racing manager Olly Morris and Frameworks Racing rider and head honcho Neko Mulally here. The trio discuss budgets, punctures, course conditions, adjustable height idlers, and of course the racing
• Stretchy rules: At least one team filed a complaint to the organiser about Fox Racing’s SpeedSuit, the clothing brand’s new-age skinsuit (one-piece outfits are against the UCI downhill rules). The UCI inspected the Suit and deemed it OK as it is in fact two pieces: a stretchy dungaree on top with a jersey underneath
• 100 deep: Congrats to Adam Brayton, who hit the 100 World Cups mark in Scotland. 100 more? We loved the look of his Flatwhite Paintworks custom lid

Continued below…

• Endorsement or political statement? Course feature of the week goes to the inventively named ‘Scottish Government Pin Ball’ upper section of track
• Headspin: Saturday saw widespread online confusion, panic and outcry as it became clear the semi-final wouldn’t be on YouTube (as was the case throughout 2023) or even on paid-for streaming or television services. With no announcement about this not-insignificant change, fans across the world were left scrambling to find a non-existent broadcast (the MTB World Series website was down all weekend, presumably from the sheer volume of people searching for information). You only need to read the damning comments beneath pretty much anything posted about Fort William online on Saturday to grasp how deceived many fans felt. No one’s perfect and the organiser clearly has big aspirations for downhill, but the uproar might have been averted with a statement before the event. Moving swiftly on…
• Scheduled chaos: On the ground, the action was coming thick and fast, but the day wasn’t without its glitches. With practice, elite and junior qualifying and elite semi-finals all pencilled for the same day, starting at 8:30 and finishing promptly at 16:30 – on paper – there was no room for delay. Unfortunately, there were several long interruptions with riders falling foul of the fast course (get well soon). This led to a number of reruns for riders who were red flagged and bumped some semi-finals runs into the evening, with Loic Bruni dropping in at 6pm. Worsening weather affected later riders’ runs, with the last 25ish getting it worst
• 2023 World Champion Charlie Hatton missed the cut in semi-finals after crashing and snapping his chain. As he didn’t have protected rider status, he had to sit out finals, to the disappointment of many home fans
• Myriam Nicole, who was out injured in 2023 and recently injured her hand but decided to ride anyway, also missed out on qualifying

More below…

• Once things got rolling on Sunday, things were looking up. Well, once the fog lifted – the junior women got the worst of it in the top section and several riders were invisible on the broadcast for half their runs. Fortunately, for the majority of riders it wasn’t so bad
• Depth of talent: As noted in the Downtime show (credit to Martin Whiteley), there were 20 elite men competing at Fort William who have won World Cup races. First-year junior Asa Vermette, in his first-ever World Cup, beat 13 of those previous winners. The American super talent’s finals time would have put him 11^th in elite
• Junior women’s racing continues accelerating. Britain’s Heather Wilson, in her first-ever World Cup, took the win here and was only 15 seconds behind Vali Höll’s winning elite time. If our maths is correct, in 2017 there was roughly a 17% difference between the elite women’s winning time and the junior winner’s time; in 2024, there was just a 5% difference. Also, in 2019 there were 7 junior women racing Fort William and this year there were twice as many. The future’s bright
• Hat-tricks: Quick reminder that Greg Minnaar won three Fort William World Cups in a row 2015-2017 and Amaury Pierron won three in a row 2018, 2019, 2022 (there were no races here in 2020 and 2021)
• Loic Bruni had never finished higher than fifth in a Fort William World Cup (and fourth at the 2023 World Champs), and has suffered some brutal slams here, but in 2024 he put his Scottish woes behind him to score a massive win. Bruni won by a margin of 1.8 seconds, which was greater than the gap between the top five elite men at the 2023 World Championships here. Has Bruni unleashed his Fort William superpower?
• Troy Brosnan won here in 2014 – his first-ever elite DH World Cup win – and this time around he showed he is right on form for 2024. Brosnan won the semi-final and finished second in the final, his best result since 2021
• Opinion: The sound effects were better this year
• Vali Höll looked like she’d never left the YT Mob, slotting straight back into her winning ways with her first elite World Cup win for the German brand in her first race back on the team (YT was her sponsor as a junior and she won 13 World Cups and 2 World Championships for them)
• Nina Hoffmann was the only Santa Cruz Syndicate rider in finals, but she did the team proud. Hoffmann couldn’t quite match her 2022 win here, but she gave Höll a run for her money and ended just 0.561s back in second
• Check the full results here and watch the highlights here
• More maths: There was roughly a 3:1 horns to shaka ratio in finish line celebrations
• Final thought: Junior racing is nuts – big up the organisers for instigating the live broadcast. In fact, there’s a lot to like about the way downhill racing is heading. The events look spectacular, the series is run by mountain bikers, the racing’s faster than ever. There’s been a lot of hate for the organisers online, but with some honest communication about why so much is changing and where they want to take the sport, perhaps it could soon turn into positive energy and momentum
• Big thanks to Sven, Boris and Seb for the incredible photography they contribute to our books, to everyone sending us notes and reporting from trackside, and to you for supporting our company through purchases and sharing. Cheers!