Even with a possible broken scaphoid bone and a sprained wrist, lingering reminders of a serious training-run crash, Claire Buchar was still striving to hit perfect lines in the season’s final round of World Cup downhill mountain biking action.

As she geared up to race in the Windham (N.Y.) 2010 Mountain Biking World Cup Festival, which saw the UCI World Cup circuit return to the U.S. for the first time in five years, Whistler’s Buchar took a tremendous tumble during a training run on Friday (Aug. 27).

Slipping on wet, slippery rocks and somehow randomly striking her chainguide on something, the Chain Reaction Cycles/Intense rider crashed hard as she tried to jump a so-called “doom drop” on the course. Crashing and finding herself pitched into a tree, Buchar wound up with an injured wrist, bruised ribs, a swollen knee and a wrecked bike.

She had to ride down the course in a golf cart — mainly because of the damage to her bike, which suffered a blown front wheel, chain, chain guide, chain ring and derailleur.

Anyone could be forgiven for feeling shaken after such an experience. But Buchar thrust it out of her mind as a freak crash, taped up her sore wrist and headed back out for her qualifying run on the same day, eventually finishing ninth.

“My crash made me ride safe in my qualifying run, just flow and make it down safe. And that night I hit the reset button. Even though I was stiff and sore (I still am), I knew that I could warm up and feel pretty good on my bike. And it’s amazing what you don’t feel when you are focusing on so many other things when racing,” Buchar wrote in a post-race email to The Question.

Persevering through lingering pain and putting all thoughts of the fluke crash out of her mind, Buchar threw herself into Sunday’s (Aug. 29) final with a mind to ride her best despite the crash and challenges.

But she wasn’t happy with how it played out.

“I was actually quite devastated about my finals run,” Buchar wrote. “It was a hard one to swallow. I didn’t ride my best; I had better runs in practice even after my big crash. The track had gotten so rough, and I feel like I didn’t do my lines perfect.

“The big jumps were amazing, and not all of the girls were jumping them. I knew I had an advantage there, and I knew I could do well. But I didn’t ride my best in a few technical sections, and I finished about one second off the podium, so I was a bit gutted.”

Posting a time of three minutes, 1.01 seconds, Buchar wound up completing her season-long streak of seventh-place results. Remarkably consistent, she finished seventh in every World Cup race this season.

She wound up — no surprise — seventh in the overall season standings, up two spots from where she landed in the 2009 rankings. Resurgent British rider Rachel Atherton won the final with a time of 2:49.85, and France’s Sabrina Jonnier took the top spot in the overall women’s World Cup downhill standings.

The points posted by Buchar and her hard-charging teammates helped the Chain Reaction Cycles/Intense crew finish the season as the top UCI World Cup overall team.

In Saturday’s (Aug. 28) cross-country races, Catharine Pendrel of Kamloops captured the gold medal and the overall World Cup title, while Canadian legend Marie-Hélène Prémont claimed the race silver medal. Pendrel finished second in last year’s overall World Cup standings and was delighted to earn the first overall World Cup title of her career.

Pushing aside any lingering stiffness and soreness, including the possibly broken bone in her wrist and the taped-up sprain, Buchar was planning to turn her focus to this week’s world championships at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Que.

“I’m going to give it my best; it would be too easy to sit on the sidelines,” Buchar wrote. “I will try to do my best and then I can heal my body for as long as I need to afterward.”

B.C. Cup season completed

Downhill stars on the provincial scene wrapped up the B.C. Cup season at the weekend’s Western Open in Golden, which served as the B.C. Cup Finals for downhill.

Whistler and Pemberton riders claimed three first-place positions in the final race. Whistler’s Paul Stevens and Matt Parkinson took the top two spots in the 19 to 29 Citizen Men division, while Whistler’s Jack Iles was victorious in the U15 Men category and Pemberton’s Jaime Hill ruled the Elite Women’s race.

Whistler’s Alexander Geddes finished 10th in the U17 Men division, and Whistler’s Florent Carreyron and Pemberton’s Jesse Ballhausen finished 11th and 13th, respectively, in the Senior Men’s race.

Overall season standings were also tabulated, but were not available online by press time.