Rider Diary: Tracy Moseley 
Interview with Tracy Moseley - September 2009
Britain's most established female downhiller, Tracy Moseley has been racing at the highest level for 15 years and is one of the only gravity racers to have won a round of both the downhill and fourcross World Cup, alongside multiple national titles and the prestigeous UCI Downhill Mountain Bike World Cup in 2006. With only the rainbow stripes elluding the Malvern-based rider, 2010 and Mont St. Anne would be an apt counterpoint to Steve Peat's astonishing World Championship title in 2009. Read Tracy's feature-length interview here, before catching the latest in her rider diary.
June 24 2010
XC Racing and World Cupping
Being back home for a few weeks is always good to get settled again and having a free weekend even gave me time to squeeze in a visit to the British XC Series!
Trek had asked me if I would pop down to Wasing Park to take part in the team relay...I expected it to be a relay with each rider doing one lap of the full XC track which I was getting a little nervous about, but it turned out to be a two minute sprint around a bumpy bit of woodland !
It was great fun and it certainly hurt, it was the most peadlly two minute race I have ever done. Fortunately I had some pretty fast team mates and once we were in the lead after the first leg we just had to keep hold of the lead to take the win and a profitable one at that! I think I'll be taking up relay racing as it pays well!
I was only supposed to be doing the relay, but I ended up doing three laps of the XC course over the duration of the afternoon and loved it! There was only about three climbs, all forty seconds long the rest was just fun flowing singletrack through the bluebell woodlands. I couldn't resist having a go the next day and ended up entering the Sport women race. I thought 3 laps would be plenty!
It's been years since I've raced XC and you really do forget how much they hurt as you just spend the entire time going as hard as you can; still I really enjoyed it and especially the format they use at the British XC Series where all the female categories go off together. This way there are always people around and a race going on all the time, it was great. I ended up winning Sport and putting in some good lap times, so I was really happy with where my fitness is at and had a great time doing something different and getting back to my roots! Thanks to Trek for inviting me down and to Martyn Salt for putting on a great event.
The following weekend it was proper business time as it was World Cup Round 1 in Maribor, Slovenia. I also received my new helmet paint job just in time for Maribor. Thanks to the Drop Off Cafe at Afan for their continued support this season and the nice logo on my helmet. Maribor is always a good track and it was going to be one of the shortest of this year's World Cup.
Unfortunately the weather forecast I saw before I left would turn out to be true. It was a very wet and muddy weekend. The wind on race morning even stopped the gondola and everyone had to be bussed to the start which is a long windy bus trip!
Maribor has a few pretty technical sections and with the mud it became really challenging just getting down. I had a few big crashes and near misses over the course of the weekend which I think knocked my confidence a fair bit as in both my qualifying and final run I really felt like I just rode the track and didn't race down, so an eighth place finish was all I went away with after a disappointing weekend.
I was then home for a day, which was spent doing washing for the most part. I also squeezed in a trip to the osteopath and a massage as I felt pretty beat up after Maribor. I then flew out to the US for round two of the Pro Gravity Series at Plattekill, New York. It was a beautiful little ski hill in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea what all the people do who live there as all I saw were people mowing their massive lawns and drinking beers!
I did quite a bit of road riding to and from the race and saw all sorts of animals enroute; beavers, deer, porcupines, marmots, chipmunks, we really were in the woods it was great. I really enjoyed riding the track at Plattekill, it was short but packed with technical rock sections and natural drops. It was a great event with a real family atmosphere. I was really happy with my riding there and took the win ahead of Melissa Buhl to make it two wins in the Pro GRT series.
We then had a short drive down to Vernon in New Jersey for the US Open. The US open has turned into a pretty big event over the last few years, attracting a lot of top riders as the prize money is way bigger than a World Cup! It was certainly a fun park to ride at and the US Open track had some tough sections which became really tricky after a few thunderstorms! I didn't have the best race run, but just managed to edge ahead of Jill Kintner to take the win. I really enjoyed my time on the east coast and look forward to coming back over later in the year for the final World Cup at Windham.
Next up was a direct flight to Edinburgh for World Cup 2 in Fort William, Scotland - I'll let you know how that went in the next edition...
Tracy
