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August 29, 2009 written by Jeff Anderson
The trip has gone great so far. We arrived in PingTang on 23rd after a long flight stopping in Beijing, landing in Guiyang and driving 3 hours to get to this remote town. The first few days we explored the small town, practiced, and met many Chinese and others from around the world. The first day of the competition was the 27th. The opening ceremonies were in the morning and the competition for riders under 15 was in the after noon. highlights of the opening ceremonies included fire works that malfunctioned which caused a giant fire ball followed by a man with his hair caught on fire. Mitchell Long was Canada's only competitor for the 10-12 category, Benjamin. I minded for him. A minder is like a caddy, I'd tell him the best root to go through the sections and help him as he went through the sections. Mitchell Place 8th over all. The next day, the 28th, was the competition for the above 16. The 10 sections were fairly easy and short. When the competition ended I finished with 25 points out of a possible 100 which put me at 5th place. There was some controversy around sections 2 and 3. Apparently they were changed by staff in the wrong way. These two sections were made harder than intended. It was decided by the jury that these two sections would not be counted towards the score. This meant that I now had 21 points out of a possible 80 which put me at 6th place. It was funny that this decision to disallow these two moved people up and down. The Andorra rider, Xavi, was the angriest moving from 8th to 9th and I think Steve was the happiest moving from 13th to 7th. The Final Results for Canada: Benjamin Mitchell Long 8th Senior John Webster 2nd Jeff Anderson 6th Steve Dickin 7th Dave Herr 15th Aaron Dobler DNF Elite Results (The top category): Kazuki Terai 1st Japan Javi Alonso 2nd Spain Petr Bartak 3rd Slovak On the 31st myself and Steve leave for Australia to compete in the UCI world Championships, which takes place on the 1st to 6th in Canberra. This competition will be more a test of physical ability than technical skill like the china competition. I'd like to thank Derek Hansen for letting me train with the SFU foot ball team. My body is working well Derek the power has improved dramatically. There is a wall in Ping Tang that is about 53 inches high that I can side hop now that last year I didn't even think about trying. I'd also like to thank Secret Cycles for giving the bike boxes to use. ...They worked well and are still in one piece ... www.secretcycles.ca I'd also like to thank Mike Baia for making the Canadian sections really long... This makes these sections here seem super short and easy. |
Team Sponsors: 
Event Sponsors: Golden Spike Days, July 4th & 5th: 
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