At the Sharp end follows your Elite Women’s Downhill National Champ KJ Sharp as she tackles the 2022 UCI Downhill World Cup.
In part 4 of At the Sharp End, we head to Lenzerheide, Switzerland with your current British National Downhill Champion, KJ Sharp, to take a look into what racing World Cups looks like through the eyes of an up-and-coming rider.
Photos by Ross Bell.
Monday
Working through all my breaks I tried to get as much work done as possible before having to close my laptop and pack for my 9am Flight to Zurich. Around 10pm, I finally zipped my bags up and sat down with a brew and some headspace before heading to bed.
Tuesday
Feeling like I’d hardly slept, my alarm went off at 4:30am. Throwing my bags into the back of my van, I stumbled, with a brew into the driver’s seat and found myself 6-hours later, in the Swiss sun. My friend picked me up from the airport and we took the 2-hour scenic drive up into the Mountains. I spent the afternoon building up my bike, unpacking and cooking for the team. By 8pm I was fast asleep.
Wednesday
After a solid 12-hour sleep, we got to the pits ready to walk the track by 10am. I wasn’t too sure about the track. From a glance it looked simple and easy, but the huge drops and jumps worried me. I’ve not had a lot of airtime experience, and recent previous injuries, (Separated shoulder, hematoma), have naturally zapped what feels like all my confidence away.
With a couple of my team members out, and the minimal maintenance my bike required, the team engineer and myself spent a couple of hours eating burgers and drinking tea before heading back to the pits. Around 6pm I popped back to the apartment, made more food for the team, ate said food and found myself fast asleep by 8pm.
Thursday
After another 12-hours of sleep I was on my way to my first practice run. I set off out of the start gate nervous and under confident. My 2nd practice run was no better. By my 3rd run I started to feel my emotions heighten. We were already halfway through our allocated 4-hours of practice, and I still hadn’t hit any of the drops or jumps. I stopped mid-way down the track and walked off into the woods to try find some peace and calm down – it didn’t work.
Around 15 minutes later I saw Stacey Fisher, knelt to the floor, and finally let my tears out. Through my blubbering I managed to weakly form part of a sentence, ‘I’m s***, I can’t do this, I’m not good enough’. Stacey kneeled in front of me, put her arms round me and shook me ‘You are good enough, you’re my hero… come on, let’s tackle this track together’.
Two runs later, with Stacey’s amazing jumping skills, towed in, I’d cleared all the drops/jumps and my tears were replaced with this cold, quiet, heavy feeling. I didn’t feel proud, or happy or relieved. I just felt overwhelmed. I used my last run to clear all the gaps again, but without a tow to make sure it wasn’t a fluke and that I could actually do them.
Friday
Unfortunately, my 12 hours of sleep were at an end. After 8 hours I woke up feeling like I was past it. I instantly made the decision to call it a day on the over-trying malarky. I pottered through the mornings 90-minute of practice in a very chill manner, then went for a coffee in the quietest corner of a cafe I could find.
I took a good hour to sip my way through it before going for a 1 hour nap in the back of the team mechanic’s van. Waking up 90 minutes before my qualification run, I slowly gathered my things together and made my way up the hill. I stretched, did a thorough warm-up, and politely pondered out of the start gate at 13:43pm.
My run was slow and relaxed. I was so tired of crashing and not making it to the finish line that I just wanted to blooming well finish my run. I placed all my pressures to one side and simply rolled without urgency, down the track. Missing out 3 of the bigger drops, I crossed the finish line, to my surprise, 36 seconds from qualifying. This is the closest I’ve ever been to qualifying at a World Cup.
Barely stopping I rolled through the crowd, past the questions, ‘what happened KJ?, Did you crash? Is there something wrong with your bike?’, down the road towards a quiet spot by the lake. Alone, I laid in the long grass and finally allowed myself to do what I’d wanted to do all week, pray to have my dad back.
With the anniversary of his death so close, there’s no wonder my emotions had been so high all week. After a few minutes, logic kicked in and I gave up praying. I spent another 10 minutes or so allowing my tears to roll with the attempt to be free of them before heading back to the pits and facing people.
Once back at the pits, I spoke through my run with Dan from RAAW. We concluded that we now finally have a solid base to work on and there is promise in the fact that my run felt so slow, yet we were only 36s from qualifying.
For me, heading into Andorra will remain as such, relaxed and chill. The notion that qualifying is the be all and end all is no longer a part of my agenda. Simply riding these World Cup tracks, clearing the huge features and all the learning alongside is more than enough for a DH beginner to fathom.
Onto Andorra we go.
