This is the first XC World Cup of 2002 as the normal season opener at Napa California was not held this year.  It was a World Cup in a city; in 1994 they held a race on almost the same circuit. This was in the days of  John Tomac, Tinker, Ned Overand, Tim Gould, and David Baker. X-Lite still use a photo of John Tomac and I racing down one of the descents: dust is flying Tomac is riding his signature trick bike with disc wheel, latest suspension etc and I'm on my Dyna-Tech with X-Lite rigid titanium forks! 

The course was very similar - steep ups and downs a real fitness course - with too many narrow tracks. This year the World Cup has gone away from the Saturday timetrial idea for grid position and instead they just had a very big field (about 160 riders) all on the grid.  As it was the first race the top 50 from last years World Cup were on the grid first, then the rest called up on UCI ranking points. This meant Liam Killeen had number board 41, Oli Beckingsale 57, Nick Craig 75 and I 94. Not very good on a circuit that was hard to pass on, racing in Spain is always mad, you need a good start position.  The start/finish banner was nice and wide but 20m after it there was a U-turn followed by 30m before there was a gap of 3m - great! Oh yeh, then you went onto a nice wide road for 400m (why did we not start here?) the course was one start loop plus six full laps. 

Places gained on the start loop are hard to loose for the rest of the race. You tend to find your group and move up or down but by only 10-20 places for the rest of the race. This is how it was for me really. I had good legs but there is only so many people that you can pass. Starting further back you have to try so hard the first lap or so to move up the odd place. It is hard not to over extend yourself and pay for it later in the race. I spent the race in a group chasing riders in front, some came back due to not having good legs others because they tried too hard early on.  Adrian Timmis (WCPP masseur) said the race was made up of three or four riders racing at the front; not looking too bad; with a long line of riders behind suffering to hold the pace.  To add to the hot pace the temperature was around the 30' mark. 

Bart Brentjens was in a league of his own and won by over two minutes, I finished 46^th. This will give me a better starting position next week in Belgium, which will hopefully be reflected in my finishing position. 

In the women's race over five laps, Marga Fullana won with Caroline Alexander finishing 4^th.

 Madrid WC full result