2.7°C Light Rain 
When Claire Buchar pushed her Intense M6 mountain bike to the start line at the World Cup downhill finals on Sept. 15 at Schladming, Austria, she knew that she needed a strong performance.
In a run she describes as “sketchy,” Buchar negotiated the rain-soaked course in a time of 5 minutes, 19.5 seconds to finish ninth on the day and secure an eighth-place finish in the season standings.
“I tried not to think of it as pressure and focused on my riding — how to get down the mountain as fast as I could. Sometimes you have to just go with it and let whatever happens happen,” Buchar said.
“I was OK with the run. You always get to the bottom and say, ‘I could have done this better or that better,’ but that’s bike racing. You can’t be a perfectionist because you’ll never have a perfect run.”
A seven-year veteran of the Canadian National Mountain Bike Team, Buchar’s eighth-place ranking this year is a bump up from her 15th-place finish in 2007 and 13th place in 2006.
“Overall I couldn’t have asked for a better season. My goal was to finish in the top 10 and everything seemed to improve as we went along — my results, my sponsors,” Buchar said. “I got to do a bit of everything this year and I really enjoyed coaching the Gravity Camps on Whistler Mountain and the kids’ camps for WORCA.”
Buchar opened the 2008 campaign with a fourth-place finish in a NORBA-sanctioned downhill at Fontana, Calif. in March and a ninth-place finish at the fabled Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, Calif. in April.
The first three stops on the World Cup circuit — Maribor Slovenia, Valnord, Andorra, and Fort William, Scotland — produced identical 11th-place finishes, not quite where she wanted to be and what Buchar calls “miserably consistent.”
After a disappointing 14th-place finish at the World Championships at Trentino, Italy, in June, Buchar posted her best results of the season with back-to-back sixth-place finishes at Mont Saint Anne, Que., on July 27 and Bromont, Que., on Aug. 3.
“I’ve never had much luck at Mont Saint Anne. I’ve flatted there, double flatted there, crashed because of a flat, broke my shoulder, cut my leg right to the bone. Oh well, this time I got some revenge with a solid run,” Buchar said.
“Bromont isn’t as gnarly as some of the other courses but it really plays to my strengths because of the jumps — big jumps — with difficult, technical sections in between.”
Gnarly or difficult hardly describes the Red Bull Psychosis downhill at Golden, which Buchar rode in a time of 17:02.03 to win for the third straight year. The top section — the Dead Dog section — was too steep, wet and slippery to ride in training. On race day, it had dried somewhat but was still as scary as it gets.
“It’s an endurance downhill and you’d never see a course like that at a World Cup event. Even the best riders couldn’t slow down, couldn’t control their speed enough at the top,” Buchar said. “I wasn’t sure I could compete because I had a crash in training and both my ankles had swollen up like balloons.”
An accomplished freerider, Buchar placed third in the Gala freeride competition at the Kokanee Crankworx in August before settling for a fourth-place finish in the Kona Canadian Open downhill.
“The Gala is kind of how I got started riding. It’s much different than racing and a chance to show different aspects of your riding — some tricks and jumps. I was happy to finish third in a real strong field of riders,” Buchar said. “At the downhill I was really stoked for Katie Holden, a local rider, who finished third and just ripped it in the finals.”
Great Britain’s Rachel Atherton won the Kona Canadian Open downhill title and the final World Cup race at Schladming.
“To be honest, I’m pretty much exhausted from all the travelling,” Buchar said. “I’m looking forward to some rest and rehab before starting training again for next year.”
Her off-season training will be done in Australia this winter where she will also enter some local and national races. The most important date on her 2009 calendar is Jan. 31, when she will marry her fiancé Chris Kovarik at a beach side ceremony in Brisbane.
Sponsors’ Tent: Intense, Rock Shox, Sram, Truvativ, Avid, Maxxis, Sombrio Girl, Dakine, Chromag, e13, Smith Optics, Crankbrothers, Mavic, THE helmets, Troy Lee Designs armor, Evoloution Bike Shop, Dynamic Core Fitness and the Whistler Bike Park. Check out Buchar’s web page with Katrina Strand at www.canadiandhgirls.com and her blog notes at www.blackboxlabs.net.
