My first World Cup. It threw everything at me — and then some.
Nové Město was my first Mountain Bike World Cup, and I turned up not entirely sure what to expect — least of all the media rules of Warner Bros. Discovery, who run the World Cup series: what I was allowed to shoot, and what I wasn't.
The first surprise was a good one. I didn't have a photographer's bib but a partner bib — which, it turned out, gives you even more access than a straight photo pass. I wasn't going to complain about that.
Getting there was the chaotic part. We had two route options: one quick, and one "only ten minutes longer" with far fewer kilometres. The short one turned out to be all country roads, stuck behind trucks with nowhere to overtake — so we rolled into Nové Město a full two hours late.
It was also the first race where I got to watch friends from home line up for real. Maximilian Wagenstetter, from Albstadt, raced the Junior World Cup and rode strongly all the way to the line. Seeing people I know out there on a World Cup course meant a lot.
Then the real work began: learning how a World Cup actually runs, and what that means for content with Shimano — what's expected, what I can do, what I should do. We filmed a whole stack of bike checks, from Sam Gaze to Simone Avondetto, and closed out a genuinely good content weekend.
It cost me two weeks flat on my back. I'd do it again tomorrow.
On the drive home I could already feel it coming. Back in Albstadt I went down hard — two weeks barely able to move, properly ill. Was it worth it? Every single minute.
