The 4th round of the Cross Country World Cup in Grouse Mountain Canada could be seen as a bit of a shake down for some of the athletes heading into the upcoming Common Wealth games in Manchester. Kiwi Rider Kashi Leuchs pulled out a good race to put the wood on the top ranked Common Wealth rider Canadian Roland Green.

Many of Kashi's fans in NZ were watching the race unfold via web reports back home and were stunned when he pulled back Green on the last lap.

See Kashi's comments below.

It was a good race for me... firstly I had a really fun week in Vancouver, and managed to catch up with my step-sister, Amber. She also showed me around some of the fun areas of town. The weather was great all week, so overall I was in good spirits coming into Sundays race, which always helps! The start was crazy, as everyone knew that after 2 short loops, we would hit the major decent, and things would split up quickly. I was in about 10th place at this point, but unfortunately behind Ryder Hysjedal, who left a gap to the first group. I fought hard up the climb, and throughout the next lap to reach a clear 6th. Fillip Meirhaeghe had the lead, and then it was 4 riders together, about 30sec up the road. This group contained Susi, Bart, Roland, and Christoph Dupouey

The long decent was pretty steep at places and still wet because of melting snow (the race is held on a ski field over looking Vancouver). This was good for me, as I was gaining atleast 10-20 sec each lap, and could recover a bit up the steep climbs. I raced conservative until 1.5 laps, when I could see Roland was coming off the back of the group in front.

I was amazed that coming into the last lap, I still had some power in the legs. I passed Roland (who was totally blown!), and then with 1km left, I also passed Christoph D. Fillip won again, Susi 2nd, Bart 3rd. It was the first time Susi and I were on a World Cup podium together... so as you would imagine a great team dinner followed! We are all heading off to Telluride at the moment, where there is a DH world Cup this weekend. Its actually going to be a huge adventure festival, with many other sports.. so I'm hoping to catch up with some other friends from NZ, like Nathan Faave etc... should be some fun I'm sure.

Ciao,

Kashi