The deep, dark, forested steeps of Trentino were a treacherous place to be this afternoon as intermittent lashings of rain wreaked havoc on the roughest track of the year. Group B had it toughest of all as the first to dare to put rubber to dirt this morning, without help gaining traction from the ruts that developed later in the day. The search for race winning lines was put on hold as the fierce tangles of slippery roots had riders of every level bursting through the tape and flying over the bars as it turned out no one was too good for this level of anti-traction.
The slip and slide conditions put many riders off their afternoon laps or even heading up the hill to scope things out. Timed training was therefore significantly quieter than usual and few dared to really open up the throttle and risk making contact with the Val di Sol conifers. Monika Hrastnik was the only female to lay down a real hot lap, setting 5:24 as the time to beat, while Danny Hart put to 3.8 second dent in the competition ahead of Pierron, Coulanges and Iles, riding a 3:46.
Asking for a friend.
'Plain Sailing' is actually a nautical term more accurately spelled 'Plane Sailing', which is the act of determining a course to follow using fairly simple math (thus the usage, colloquially). This is compared to Mercator or Great Circle sailing, which requires more complicated formulas to determine a proper course line to follow.
See: wiki en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_sailing