The wheelers were at the Mountain Bike World Cup round at Fort William at the weekend, to support Gareth and Bruce who were competing in the mens' cross country. They were both started at the back of the grid, which put them at a considerable disadvantage as overtaking was difficult on the very tough, technical course. Gareth was brought down once when Ian Wilkinson fell in front of him on a particularly vicious downhill turn on the Nessie section. Nevertheless, against the top riders in the world they both finished respectably, Gareth 63rd and Bruce 73rd out of about 120 starters. Neither was lapped. Mid table respectability as they say, but the top of the table was all pro teams.

The lead of the mens' cross country was hotly contested, with Cannondale riders holding the first three places during the early laps only to fade a little later, and in the end Ralph Naef of Multivan Merida took it from Christoph Sauser of Siemens Cannondale, with Freddie Kessiakoff of Siemens Cannondale third. By contrast the womens' race was dominated. Gunn-Rita Dahle lead from the first lap, quickly building up a huge lead, and by the last lap she was coasting. Scottish interest was in Ruth McGavigan (wearing a Raleigh shirt) and Julie Cartner of Drumlanrig/Rik's Bike Shed; they finished 27th and 28th respectively, one lap behind the leader.

The village

The World Cup 'village' was an extensive area of trade stands and team workshops, with a lot of very interesting bikes on show - I'll write about some of them later. It was crowded and busy throughout the event, with a great atmosphere. The stars were there, and amazingly approachable. Many of them just wandered about in the crowd and seemed happy to speak to anyone. The kids all got autographs from Steve Peat, the Athertons, Tracey Mosely and others. I had quite a long chat with Freddie Kessiakoff about the new Cannondale Rush (brief summary: it's amazingly light for a real full suspension bike, and he likes it, but he's sticking to his Scalpel for now because it's lighter and he know it better; Sauser, who was second, was on a Rush). We watched Gunn-Rita Dahle warm up on rollers (and berate her mechanic about the setting of her deraileur). We watched Steve Peat on the rollers too.

Downhill

Indeed, this weekend rather changed my attitude to the downhillers. I've always seen them as essentially brainless adrenaline junkies looking for thrills without being prepared to put the work in to earn them. That isn't (entirely) true. I walked up more than half of the downhill course, and it had technical sections which, regardless of gradient, I would have great difficulty riding at any speed. Furthermore, it's not a matter of letting gravity do all the work - despite all their clobber they were all pedalling hard for considerable sections of the course, often at quite fantastic cadence, and Peat's bike had a cassette on as close ratio as any time-triallist. Nor is it a matter of going flat out all the time. During the women's race I spent some time by a jump in a birch wood with trees tight on both sides just before a fairly sharp right-hander into a boulder-strewn gully. Judging the speed for that jump needed to be fairly precise, because overcooking it would have been unrecoverable.

But at the same time, they are loonies. At another similar sized jump 200 metres further down the course they were jumping to a height of at least three metres off the deck and travelling twenty or thirty metres in the air. Not content to do this, most of them performed acrobatics in the air, laying their bike out horizontally or whatever. That can't help their performance aerodynamically, and it can't improve their chances of a clean, fast landing. It's pure display - pure showing off. Their big flappy clothes can't be helping their speed either.

What's more, quite a lot of them were riding with injuries. I saw Celine Gros about twenty minutes before the start of the womens downhill, wearing a 7stanes shirt and limping around on a plastered ankle, quite relaxed, cheerfully talking to children in very fractured English. What a shame for her, I thought, being here and not being able to ride. Not a bit of it. Next time I saw her she was a blur a metre off the ground down a narrow alley through the woods with corduroy to land on. Mad! Then one of the British riders - I think Neil Donoghue - came down to a good position in the mens' event with a broken wrist. At the end you could see how much pain he was in, but he still did it. Another rider rode it with a broken hand. And so on. Rachel Atherton raced despite having had a horrible looking crash on the four-cross the previous night when she collided with another rider and both went off into the crowd.

Apart from the human injuries I saw two riders complete the course with flat tyres (one front, one rear); one with a broken crank; and two with broken transmissions. Given that I wasn't at the bottom until two thirds of the way through the men's event that certainly isn't the full tally.

Brief summary: mad, of course. But very skilled cyclists, as well. And Steve Peat especially so - in a very hotly contested field he managed to pull more than two seconds out of his nearest rival.

The bikes

GT had a bike with an epicyclic in the frame ina Nicolai Nucleon/GBoxx stylee but it clearly wasn't a Rohloff. I asked the mechanic if it was a Nexus 8 and he confirmed it was, saying the bike was 'in production' and 'affordable'. It was very heavy, though - probably about 17 Kg.

Greg Minaar's Honda was no longer 'top secret' this year, and I was able to get good photographs of the transmission. Indeed, my last memory of the event was of Minaar's mechanic standing in the queue at the burger stall, with the Honda superbike... I was not able to establish for certain whether it has a primary chain and epicyclic, but I don't think so. I think the plain disk centre left in the photo represents the position of a secondary shaft and that the disk above it with the concentric rings and hexagonal nut-like feature represents the output shaft, and what you're looking at is something developed from a moped gearbox, probably with seven or eight speeds.

The new Cannondale Rush is of course for me utterly droolworthy; quoted weight for the racing bikes 'about 10Kg'. The carbon/titanium Lefties on these and the Scalpels were a new model I haven't seen before and were marked '88', but Kessiakoff confirmed they were 100mm travel and air sprung. In common with almost all the other top teams, the Cannondales had SRAM X0 transmissions, with gripshifts. Shimano transmissons were pretty rare, and the only SRAM X0 trigger-shifter I saw was on a very nicely specced Orange 5 on the Orange stand. It was clearly a 'next year's model' and was considerably less boxy and industrial looking than this year's Oranges. Most of the top cross country riders were riding on double, not triple, front chainsets.

The only new frame which impressed me as particularly interesting was an Orbea carbon hardtail which had clearly been designed with real thought to use the compliance of carbon to achieve the equivalent of softtail performance without an actual suspension unit. The frame was a prototype and was not being raced. There was a carbon Colnago hardtail being raced by a woman in Colnago team colours, but it looked disappointingly ordinary and certainly wasn't leading the field.

Finally, the organisation.

Superb. Free shuttle busses (lots of them - frequent service) from park-and-ride carparks up to the venue; more free shuttle busses from close to the start/finish area out to interesting points on the cross country course; and the cable car up to the top of the downhill course (which I didn't use because I didn't fancy the queue). The only thing I'd criticise was the shear volume of the PA system. It was so loud that it made it actually painful to be around the arena.

Over all, an excellent weekend. Even the weather was fine.