Timing chips ready to go for the first round of the 2014 World Cup

The first dust kicked up in anger has settled in Pietermaritzburg and the Timed Training results are in.

In the Mens things are pretty well spread and clearly riders are getting used to the new track and dialling their lines. That said it could be telling, Troy Brosnan lies just shy of 4 seconds back on Greg Minnaar in first, the young Australian is clearly on the pace. Blenki is in 3rd with a solid time but most interestingly is Aaron Gwin who may be in 8th but is the only rider to break the 70kph mark.

Minnaar stands well in the form, Steve Jones has been delving into his results book and pointed this out on Facebook…

What the Geek Stats don’t tell you is that Greg has gone 12 World Cups without a win. A win that would equal Peaty’s record of 17. Greg will be under immense pressure but he will never have such a great chance as this. To do it on home soil would be off the charts.

If you were on any form of social media today then you will have seen that Rachel Atherton has been in a bad way and there is a question mark over her practicing tomorrow. Hoping she gets back to 100% before race day but today timed training went on without her.

Ragot took the top spot and in her first race in Elite Tahnee Seagrave nailed her intentions with 2nd. This is only timed training but it gives some idea of who is where. There was a big time gap back to Manon but she was the fastest through the speed trap with 61.838 kph which is in the ball park of the double digit Mens riders.

Last up is the Juniors and not surprisingly Loris Vergier was up, and up by a long way. Over 16 seconds up on his closest rival the young ripper could be hard to beat in South Africa.

So that’s that, more practice coming up and the race day is Saturday so make sure you check the schedule to see what’s happening when.