Our smooth, suave and sophisticated fantasy league specialist and all round legend Tim Wild takes time out from his awesome, action packed life to assess his team ahead of Mont-Sainte-Anne this weekend. Did I say he has great hair?
Photos: Seb Schieck
I don’t know if you’ve been reading these closely over the season (thanks if you have!) but I’ve noticed that on a couple of occasions I’ve been referred to as an armchair enthusiast and a World Cup fanatic in the introductions (I haven’t written these intros until now – see if you can notice the difference). It’s not like they aren’t correct statements, I bloody love a good armchair, I just figured I should try and shake the armchair tag and go to a race. After all, I’ve got riders to motivate and check up on.
So off I went to Lenzerheide to watch the team in action. I’ll spare you all of the details, but lets just say it was a pretty shambolic trip from my end; I flew to the least convenient airport; I took the wrong currency; I didn’t know the speed limit and got two speeding fines and I didn’t realise I’d need to remortgage the house to buy dinner.
Anyway, to the race and the fantasy league… and hey! my team – Rachel Atherton, Aaron Gwin, Danny Hart, Bryn Dickerson and Emyr Davies, AKA Ron Swanson’s Bacon – had a blinder and put me in to 99th place overall. I’m super stoked about that and fingers crossed I can stay in the top 100 until the end of the season.
Tactically there is no way I’m going to change the structure of my team as I’d have to swap out one of the ‘big 3’ of Rachel, Aaron or Danny to make way for someone else, and barring any injuries, they are staying after their performances at Lenzerheide (just to remind you, both Atherton and Hart won, and Gwin came second… you don’t really get much better than that).
MSA should be a great race; Loic Bruni is back and looking at the results from last year things were mixed up a bit with Josh Bryceland taking the win – his only top 3 finish of the season – and Gwin out of the top 5 for only the second time of the season. Look back to 2014 and you’ll see that Sam Hill won…
If you are hoping for a wildcard to do well and score you those all-important points then this is the time to take a risk. I expect Bruni will be put back into a lot of teams on his return and of course, you’d expect him to come back hungry and with a point to prove. I’m putting £5 on him to ‘win’ timed training and throw a marker down. Any takers?
