2005      THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

• After three attempts Steve Peat finally wins in Fort William. There is a huge sense of relief from everyone. We can all now relax.
• But better still. Tracy Moseley also takes the win…just…from a very young Rachel Atherton. The Brits have had a good day at the office, it was a defining moment.
• The time around Fort William is the final round of the World Cup series, so titles are decided.
• Lopes racing in ‘Jimmy hat’ much to the crowd’s amusement.
• Sam Hill has a bad day, he gets to the finish with a bent pedal and crank.
• New Zealander Scarlett Hagan takes a big stack and has to be airlifted off the hill.
• 4X gets its first streakers…unfortunately they are both male.

• “this was a day with an outcome that many had dreamt of but few thought would ever happen…the man had won (Peaty). It was a magical moment in downhill history. Triumph, glory, the whole damn lot.”

My Fort William story goes back a little further than the last 10 years really, in fact, my Fort William experience goes all the way back to 1974 when my mum was waddling about watching the Scottish Six Day trial with me in her tummy. After that I went up there for the next 16 years for the same reason. It’s quite ironic that this year will be my first time competing in the SSDT and it is also the 100^th year of the event and something I have wanted to do since about 1974!

For me mountain biking in Ft William started around 1993/94. I travelled up to race a national event and had to jump off my bike cyclocross style to run through a big boggy stream crossing. It paid off and I took the win.

So as you can tell Fort William already had a special place in my heart long before the World Cup first visited and it has only been enhanced by this very fact. I was so happy and excited back in 2001 when it was announced that we would have a World Cup round there. A World Cup in Britain, what could be better? From 2001 to 2011 I am still that same happy and excited person when I know we are heading back up to the highlands to race our bikes.

There are many stories over the last 10 years, but I think it’s appropriate and important for me to share my win in 2005 with you all. It no understatement that I wanted to win badly at Fort William and because of this maybe I put too much pressure on myself for the first few years. Coming into 2005 I felt that I just needed to settle in and ride for me, not for the fans. It’s always an awesome atmosphere and it’s hard to get from our pits to the chairlift, sometimes I just have to get my head down and crack on. It’s not because I don’t want to sign autographs or chat with people, it’s because I have to get on with the job in hand!

Practice was going well and when it came to qualifying I put a good run in, but I saved something back for the finals, I was really happy to emerge the fastest qualifier but was a little unsure as to how much extra pressure I had stuck on my own head. I tried to keep it calm and focus on the job in hand, my run was going well but the thing that stands out the most on that descent was the crowd.

I set off from the startgate and there were cheers and sporadic, ‘Go on Steve’ from the off. Then a little further down the hill it was a louder, ‘come on Peaty’ from a larger group of cheering fans and spectators. A little further down and those calls were louder as they came from bigger groups of supporters, and so on until I got on the motorway section. In any race situation you have no idea how you are doing against the other competitors or the clock so you just have to dig deep and keep it going to the line, this one was a little different for me, it felt like everyone watching was willing me down that hill. I obviously knew that if I got a big cheer on the Tissot arch coming into the finish that I was in with a chance, but I wasn’t expecting how loud that cheer would be. I kept it going to the line and managed to win.

I was not ready for the welcome I got. I rolled over the line and the cheers were so loud I didn’t know what to do. Sometimes you have things you like to do or people you like to see once you are over the line, but to be honest here I was dumbfounded. The noise that 20,000 plus people generated that day was way bigger than I could have imagined. My good friend Brian Lopes came and congratulated me, but afterwards he said I looked weird, my eyes were glazed and I seemed empty, the only way I can explain this is how overwhelmed I was with the support and noise that happened that day. It was an unreal experience for me and I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you that opened your mouths and let out a cheer/cry/scream whatever that day. It is without doubt the best sporting experience I have ever witnessed out of every sport in the whole world.