Santa Cruz Syndicate’s Greg Minnaar (SRAM/RockShox) bags another win this season here at Northstar in Lake Tahoe at the Pro GRT Downhill event. He was joined on the podium by teammate Steve Peat in 3rd, and fellow Santa Cruz rider, Cedric Gracia of the Brigade, in 4th. Bryn Atkinson was on the second step and young rider, Mitch Ropelato, rounded out the podium in 5th. (Josh Bryceland stayed home for this event to recover from his crash in Leogang where he suffered a concussion and an impact to his AC shoulder joint).
Santa Cruz Syndicate’s Greg Minnaar (SRAM/RockShox) retains the leader’s jersey in the UCI World Cup Downhill Series with a 3rd place finish today on this dry, dusty, brutal track in Fort William, Scotland. Steve Peat and Josh Bryceland made improvements on their qualifying runs, but still battled to get the flow just right and placed 18th and 26th respectively. As always, the crowd and atmosphere here at Fort William was vibrant with over 7,000 people watching the downhill.
Greg Minnaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate/SRAM/RockShox), starts off the UCI World Cup downhill season with a big win. He put together a brilliant run to win the season opener in Maribor, Slovenia in the most dismal conditions on a course Greg would describe as “the hardest course I’ve ever ridden because of the mud and rain.” Teammates Josh Bryceland and Steve Peat strung together less than optimal runs for disappointing 16th and 45th positions respectively.
Wow, what a busy trip in Portugal for the Santa Cruz Syndicate this has been! Landing in Porto, Portugal last week and having 20 pieces of baggage (large baggage at that), all arriving with us started the trip well. With Ricky Bobby and the brand new Peaty Syndicate van waiting curbside for us, we stuffed the van full and hustled down to Lousa to meet up with Cedric Gracia and his new Brigade rig. The mechanics and Santa Cruz engineers, Joe Graney and Josh Kissner went right to work to get the new Santa Cruz Carbon V-10’s ready to test. Jon Cancellier from SRAM/RockShox was also there to keep things top notch in his department.
Liverpool’s Apposing has teamed up with Steve Peat, the reigning world champion in his field, to release what they believe is the first downhill mountain biking game app designed for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad.
Sheffield-based Peat, a well-known figure in the death-defying sport of downhill biking, is the first rider to be featured in the game, with further real-life professionals to be added after its launch.
This has been planned to coincide with the 2010 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup event at Fort William, Scotland on 5-6 June.
Apposing’s game has built in courses from across the globe, a 3D virtual bike shop (so users can buy the latest kit and customise their steeds) and a wide variety of music.
David Brown, the agency’s MD, commented: “Being the first App of its kind, ‘Steve Peat – Downhill Mountain Biking’ takes full advantage of Apple’s technology by providing players with unique interactivity capturing the fast and frantic game-play derived from this extreme sport.”
Peat himself added: “We are confident that this game will raise the bar within the extreme sports genre, while appealing to new and existing fans including the mountain biking community.” www.apposing.co.uk
Steve’s reaction to winning the “Mountain Bike Personality Of The Year” category in this year’s Singletrack Reader Awards: “It’s great to hear I’ve won the ST award. It’s been a pretty amazing year and I’ve won lots of awards and it’s a pretty good feeling to get recognition. I’ve got a huge following and it’s pretty special for me to have that. I want to thank all those people who follow me and for the reader awards, it really means something for me to have that support”
Read more of Nathan Clarke’s interview with Steve over on Singletrack World.
DOWNHILL mountain biking world champion Steve Peat admits he was ‘blown away’ to land top prize at the 2009 South Yorkshire Sports awards.
The 35-year-old saw off competition from four other world champions, including heptathlete golden girl Jessica Ennis, to scoop the senior performer of the year award at the English Institute of Sport last night.
