Craig finishes 23rd in World Cup bike race

FORT WILLIAM, Scotland – Adam Craig of Corinth and Bend, Ore., finished 23rd overall Sunday in the International Cycling Union’s fourth World Cup mountain biking cross country race of the season.

Craig was timed in 2 hours, 23 minutes, 12 seconds, more than six minutes behind reigning Olympic champion Julien Absalon of France, who scored his third World Cup victory in as many weeks.

Absalon finished in 2:16:34 to edge second-place Jose Antonio Hermida Ramos of Spain by eight seconds.

Craig was the second-fastest American among 119 bikers who finished the race. U.S. Olympian Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski had the top American finish in a World Cup event so far this season, racing to a fifth-place finish in 2:19:01.

Craig currently ranks 27th in the World Cup point standings through four of the year’s six events. Absalon leads the point standings, while Horgan-Kobelski is the top American, using his Fort William result to vault into 10th place overall.

Craig will return to the United States this week to begin competing in the National Mountain Biking Series. The 2006 opener in that series is scheduled for next weekend in Fontana, Calif., followed by stops in Banner Elk, N.C., (June 10-11) and Mount Snow, Vt., (June 17-18) before the UCI World Cup tour makes its annual stop at Mont-Sainte-Anne, Quebec, on June 24-25.