TOM'S REPORT FROM ROUND 1 OF THE WORLD CUP.

From the 11^th to the 13^th of May I raced at the 1^st round of the UCI World Cup in Vigo, Spain. The course was 50% different to the course the year before. Some of the main rock sections hard been taken out and replaced with a very challenging and even more technical track.

It was great to be racing at the World Cup this year as an early season injury to my hand stopped me from training for 5 weeks, forced me to miss the 1^st National race of the year and threatened to stop me from racing on top form at Vigo. After some early practice runs and some bike alterations I felt good and had totally forgotten the hand injury.

In my qualifying run I crashed near the top of the course due to a really stupid mistake and must have lost a heap of time. I knew to qualify here with a crash would be really difficult and I would have to take a lot of risks and push hard for the rest of my run. I got through in 76^th position out of the 80 riders who go through to the final.

On the Sunday the weather was mixed and it had been raining all night, so the track was wet. In my final run I rode great. I made some small mistakes and quite a large one near the bottom but I came down in 2^nd behind Marc Beaumont who had also crashed in his qualifying run. With 40 riders still to go and me still sitting in 2^nd position it started to rain and continued to do so for 5-10 minutes. The track must have been harder to ride but before the top 10 riders came down it started to dry up due to the baking hot sun. Eventually I got pushed back to 9^th but was still pretty chuffed.