Taken from posts on NCDSA UK Forum By Paul Price
It was an intense weekend – for the GS at Vysoke Chvojno it rained all day and we waited until 8pm when it dried out enough to have a single run of the bottom part of the GS. Friday at Tylovo nabrezi was a 50 cone flat tight in the centre of town, and Sunday at Hradec Kralove had a fast 80 cone hybrid on a hill.
Czech TV filmed it and the racing will look great. People in the bar said they had seen us racing on TV.
The organisers promised to mail all the competitors a compilation DVD.
Team GB suffered from lack of training. As Mika from Sweden told me, training without ramps and timing gear is not training. All the top riders train with timing, and ramps too. How else can you discover what works?
In between runs other teams were changing wheels, boards, truck angles and bushings because they knew what would work to make them faster on that particular course and road surface.
The level of all the competitors was really good and the racing fantastically close. There were no easy rounds. I remember thinking on the Sunday that if I could have improved my qualifying time of 22.9 by only 0.5 seconds I would have qualified 5th instead of 12th place. I am sure every other racer was thinking the same way!
Thanks to Sam, Louis, Mick and Ella for the good company. Kudos to Louis for racing fast all weekend. Ella was just off the podium.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future it’s to train with ramps and timing equipment before a big race (and wear sunscreen).