After a week living it up in sunny Scotland the Dirt team have arrived home. Actually it wasn’t that sunny and we didn’t live it up, we had work to do, lots of it-queue the violins please.
I’m not sure what the event looked like on TV but the atmosphere there was absolutely electric, i’m talking a 1000v, three phase, goose bumping stuff. I’ll find out the facts and figures of crowd numbers and hot dogs eaten later, but for me the noise and emotion in the finish arena made me dizzy. The highlight for me has to be Ruaridh Cunningham winning Gold in the Juniors, the first thing he did was to lob his goggles into the crowd, he told me that as he did it he thought ‘shit, they where good goggles and i only got them yesterday’. I’m sure he wont have to worry about goggles for a while.
Hats off to Gee Atherton bagging Bronze, i know the wind kept changing direction up at the top and it did seem a bit rougher for the last few down.
After qualifying fastest in the womens seeding Rachel Atherton, lost out to Jonnier in the final taking Silver just 4.01 seconds down.
Katy Curd had a flyer in the Junior Womens final ,grabbing a Silver Medal.
There was a fair amount of disappointment for other British riders, including Peaty who lost his saddle in the top section and had to cruise down.
Bryceland punctured while on a hot time, and Tracey Moseley had rear wheel problems.
The Dirt photo exhibition,SNAP, was a huge success with over a 1000 punters queuing to get in on Saturday alone. The opening night was heaving and maybe the free booze had something to do with the ‘humourous’ comments in the visitors book, they were slightly less poetic than the quotes left by the usual clientele, remember this was a posh gallery. That didn’t stop the souvenir hunters ripping down the Dirt banners on the last night, still the owner told us that his guard dog had blood and clothing in its mouth the following morning, so the thieves didn’t get away with out injury.
