Fort William World Cup: Gallery – victory and upset.

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Greg Minnaar today equalled Steve Peat’s win of 17 World Cup wins – with five of those being at Fort William. Minnaar managed to put a second into Aaron Gwin who was looking unstoppable with a lead of four seconds over his nearest rival, but Minnaar put years of racing at Fort William to good use as he navigated the muddy and cut-up course that had changed dramatically over the week, thanks to days of heavy rain.

Meanwhile, in the women’s race, Rachel Atherton won by a convincing eight seconds over second place, fellow Brit, Tahnee Seagrave – but it could have been very different. Manon Carpenter was looking to finish in at least second place when she took the big jump into the arena – the only top woman to do so – and, despite having cleared it in practice, she didn’t quite have enough speed and clipped the landing, firing her over the bars into a heap. Dazed, she calmly got up and walked to her bike, rolling down and still finishing in fourth place. Apart from a sore neck, she looks to be OK. Ignoring that, though, it was a great day for British mountain biking as four of the top five women’s spots were taken by home riders.

We have hundreds of shots from the weekend that we’ll run over the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the gallery below. We’re off to pack the stand into a van and sit in traffic for a while.

The moment before it all went wrong for Manon
Halfway through the next moment, with it all going wrong.

Top Fives:
Women:
1. Rachel Atherton
2. Tahnee Seagrave
3. Emmeline Ragot
4. Manon Carpenter
5. Katy Curd

Men:
1. Greg Minnaar
2. Aaron Gwin
3. Marcelo Gutierrez Villegas
4. Gee Atherton
5. Sam Blenkinsop

Juniors:
1. Martin Maes
2. Laurie Greenland
3. Alex Marin Trillo
4. Loris Revelli
5. Frazer McCubbing

There (wrongly) isn’t a separate Junior Women’s category, but here are the placings:
1. Marine Cabirou
2. Blanca Aracil Alba
3. Rona Strivens
4. Elena Melton
5. Sacha Bickerstaff

Minnaar – a worthy and popular winner here at Fort Bill

Gallery below – hit the Biggerer button for full screen action.

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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