On Saturday, Zoe Gillings competed in the first LG FIS World Cup SBX event of the season in Chapelco, Argentina. Despite her preparations being badly hampered she stormed through her heats and had an outstanding result of 4th place. Read on to hear Zoe’s account of what went on.........
I have just finished my first world cup of the season and I was battling through the whole time!
The course was really tough, it was long with a tricky first section and loads of massive jumps, some of which you had to jump off the lip of as hard as you could just to make it to the landing. The helicopter was pretty busy ferrying injured riders to hospital during training.
I had a hard time in qualifying yesterday, after I took a big fall in practice and hurt my back, neck and head I had to sit down for 20 minutes before I felt good enough to ride again. I kept going with practice anyway and had time to get one full run in before qualifications began.
I had a very good top section on my first run but I misjudged my timing on a roller in the mid section which cost me a lot of time as this prevented me from making it to the landings of the next 4 jumps. Despite that my time put me into 10th place before the second qualification run.
My second run went a lot better with me riding everything well until the final jump where I fell on the landing, after falling I started rolling towards the finish line so instead of trying to right myself onto my feet again which would have taken a lot of my momentum away I just kept on rolling and crossed the line horizontally. Surprisingly the time from this run beat my first one and I moved up into 7th place. That’s one of my best qualifying places in a while.
Today was finals day and when I woke up I didn’t feel too good at all! 7 different places on my body hurt. Namely my foot, knee, thigh, back, shoulder, neck and head. Due to finding cuts I no longer have a physio at competitions this season which sure didn’t help. When I got to the hill a couple of people mentioned to me that they had seen my crash in practice yesterday and was surprised I was still riding but wished me the best of luck for the day.
In my first heat I had a good start but was in 3rd going into the first turn. I managed to pass one girl 2 turns later and the other shortly after that to take to lead and won the race.
My next heat was even better. My main competition was Mellie Francon who was ranked 3rd in the world last season. I had another good start but Mellie got in front of me into the first turn, I followed her for a few features gathering speed before passing her on the straight section. I was then in the lead again and won that race too.
I was now in the final against numbers one, two and three in the world. My start out of the gate was ok but I fell on one of the tricky features near the start unfortunately, I tried to catch up but there was no chance.
Anyway I am pretty happy because I finished in 4th which means I am now ranked 4th in the world!
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