We arrived pretty late on the Thursday night after some riding that morning in Morzine, so we parked up, got the pasta on and stayed the night in a little playpark, next to the slide, opposite the 4 seater roundabout. It soon turned out that this playpark was actually going to be someones pit space, so we were soon moved on to the next car park.

The next morning, Ben jumped into the shuttle with some of the guys we had been riding with in Morzine, and started getting to know the track. I headed up the track with Kiwi Wyn Masters and got the camera out to film some of the dodgy Italian hucks that were littered throughout the track. We finished the day off with an Ice cream from the local Trattoria up the road, where Ben tested his new Italian phrases on the local ‘piece of rough’ behind the counter.

Saturday was the first day of organised practise and with the lack of chairlift here, the shuttle service was a complete mess. The pits were half way up the hill, but not even near to the track, and the road from top to bottom was only one way so the riders ended up waiting at the bottom of the track for up to 2 hours on a shuttle to pick them up. Some riders even found out that it was quicker to walk up the road to the top than wait on the bus. 7 hours and 5 runs later, they called it a day and headed back for a cold shower after suffering in 33 degrees of Italian humidity.

The rest of the night was spent with the Kiwis again causing some tension between the locals with their laser pen as they interrupted a game of “Botcha”. There were 4 old boys throwing big metal balls at a little metal ball but as soon as the little red dot was thrown in, tempers were frayed and the Kiwis fell about the floor in tears of laughter as ‘eyebrows’ and ‘snowflake’ got a bit personal with their hand gestures.

Sunday saw only 1 practise run due to shuttle service fiasco, then seeding runs followed a while after that.
Bens seeding run placed him 1st for the final and ended up finishing 1st place in the final. It was a close race with second place going to Nathan Rankin just 0.05 seconds behind. With the top 5 finishers coming from New Zealand, Australia and Ireland, there wasn’t an Italian in sight on the podium.
Were off to Switzerland now for an IXS cup in Verbier next weekend.