Victor Lucas selects his 8 favourite images from Friday timed practise and 4x finals at the World Championships in Canberra, Australia.

Mick Hannah was telling me about a 45km race he did last week called the ‘Triple R’ in his hometown near Cairns. Ranch, Rainforest and Reef. It starts in the farms and goes down through jungle and ends on the beach. Sounds like a fun race, and Mick seems to be having a good time this week. The pedalling was probably pretty good training too as he put some serious power down in the flat section today. Mick is already the unofficial ‘World Pump Track Champion’, but what if he could add a second title to that on Sunday?

Sam Hill was 2nd fastest in timed runs behind Hannah, but he was ahead on the first two splits. The question is was he giving it full throttle in the last 30 seconds of pedalling or was he saving something for Sunday?

Shaun O’Connor has his own take on the light DH bike – he was running an Ironhorse Sunday with single crown Totem forks. It seems to be working well for him, he had a killer fast top split in the rocks and kept it steady all the way to a fastest run in the junior men.

Tracy Moseley wasn’t running any of the super special aerodynamic parts that Trek have been trying out. But she was convincingly fast through the top 2 splits and only lost time to second place rider Claire Buchar when it came to the last pedalling section.

Caroline Buchanan leads Jill Kintner through the inside line of the first corner. The first turn had two lines options and this is definitely a good way of avoiding the usual first turn carnage, but the rider in gate 1 has a good chance of making the inside berm first and then they have a pretty good chance of getting away. Hard to call which is better.

Buchanan leading the women’s final through the ‘Bungle Bungles’. Even though Kintner was doing her best to line up a pass, it was pretty much single file to the line. The packed Ozzie crowd went insane when Buchanan crossed the line for the hometown win. I reckon she could dine out in Canberra on this win for some time.

In the 2nd semi, Saladini seemed to slip a pedal out of the gate, and lost a lot of ground, but he got a lucky break when Tomas Slavik cased a double, popped his front tyre and went down hard. These guys run the lightest parts they can get away with and the stiffest setup they can handle, that’s a combo that leaves no margin for error. Either way it sure helped Saladini on his way to silver medal.

Finally, at last Graves has beaten the World Champs bad luck.
And what better place to win the Worlds than your home country. He dominated every race tonight with devastating gates and smooth skills all the way. He was pretty speechless but said he was really feeling the pressure after Buchanan won the women’s race.

Victors Friday Worlds 8-a-day included Jared Graves and Caroline Buchanan winning the World championships in Canberra, Australia