For the second round of the world cup, the team headed down under, to Cairns in Australia to check out the critters, beaches and hopefully dry and dusty race conditions. Upon arrival, spirits were high despite the horrific jet lag and we opted to head straight for the beach, and then onto one of Cairns’ most popular cliff jumping spots. It seemed Innes Graham had no fear jumping from the highest ledge, which was about 15-20 meters, Phil was then peer pressured by Eddie Masters and crew into jumping it himself.
Following the creek escapades, we then hit up local legend Mik Hannah to go ride and film some of his local tracks – and by heck they get gnarly round these parts. Check it out in the video for some technical jungle riding, oh and the odd highside.
Once the race rolled around, all the boys were keen to get riding down what looked to be one of the most fun tracks we’d seen, judging from track walk. A good few triples were spotted and debates were had over the infamous top rock garden.
Phil felt ace on course in practice, and put down a solid race run with few errors to land him in a consistent 33 had to say post race run: “Yeah it was good fun, I was riding quite tired at the top, kind of sketched those top corners up. But I can’t complain, once I hit the crowd at the rock garden, I was just stoked beyond belief, absolutely loving it. I did a little squeal out of excitement. Ben: He actually pedalled well too, for a wingnut”.
