Hill secures World Cup with victory

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While the women's World Cup downhill title had been decided prior to the final race, the men's was completely open. Sam Hill (Monster Energy / Specialized / Mad Catz) was leading, but by the slimmest of margins; the Australian sat only 16 points ahead of Greg Minnaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate), with new world champion Steve Peat (Santa Cruz Syndicate) also still in the race, 69 points behind Hill. Gee Atherton (Animal Commencal) was also in with a shout, holding a tally of 141 points.

Hill's lead was padded when he picked up 50 valuable points by winning qualifying, while Minnaar crashed, but the race between the two basically came down to final: if Minnaar won and Hill didn't finish second, the South African would take the title.

"I was alright until 20 minutes before the start of my race," revealed Hill afterwards. "Greg had done a good run, so I started to get a bit nervous. I was pretty shaky, and all I could think about was the overall, and that I had to get down fast to beat Greg. I think it's been a good strong battle all year. I had some bad luck at some races, and so did others, so it is definitely pretty special to come out on top here."

Josh Bryceland (Santa Cruz Syndicate) set the first time under 4:10, but barely had a chance to climb into the Hot Seat before his teammate Minnaar came down two riders later to obliterate his time with a 4:04.71. This run began to look pretty solid, as names such as Mick Hannah (GT Bicycles), Justin Leov (Yeti Fox Shox), Peat and Gee Atherton all came up short.

"I felt that I had it in me to do well," said Minnaar, "but I had a bad start, made some mistakes and lost my rhythm. I kept making small mistakes through the top until I was able to regroup halfway down. I was surprised that my time held up so long. It's kind of hard to lose the title when I had the most wins for the season."

However, Minnaar's hopes received a blow when Sam Blenkinsop (Yeti Fox Shox) knocked nearly a second and a half off his time.

Blenkinsop took the Hot Seat and held it through the remaining riders until it was Hill's turn. The Australian came through the first split over two seconds up on Blenkinsop, and continued on to finish 2.33 seconds in front, taking his second World Cup win of the season and confirming him as the World Cup winner for 2009. Minnaar stayed in second while Peat remained in third.

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