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When things are going well at a downhill you can feel the chilled out vibe. Guys and girls sat around talking about race lines, soaking up some sunshine or clambering back up the course to support the riders. It’s a great place to be.
Saturday, and most of the riders at Cwmcarn’s new NPS DH track were wishing they could be somewhere else. Heavy rain had turned the brilliant course into a mudfest with the uplift transport struggling to get riders to the top alive; the tension was flowing through the race village. Thanks to these compounding problems, our boys Pete Drew and Ash Mullane were struggling to get practice runs in, never a good thing in downhill. When we spoke to Drew he’d been in the back of a truck wondering whether it was going to disappear over a mountainside and Ash was just hacked off with the lack of practice.
Qualifying had been cancelled on the Saturday and this meant that Sunday was going to be a high-pressure affair. The boys would have to get in early, churn out some practice runs down the hill and then sit back and wait for their race runs – double ranking points were available but with only one run down the hillside it was going to be a massive ‘all or nothing’ kind of race.
Sunday and myself and the Ratboy woke at 6, still a bit cloudy from a few too many Vin Rouge’s the night before. The Ratboy was on good form and we trucked up to the race in South Wales in good time. The weather was awesome – sunny and warm – we knew that it would be a good day for some DH racing, and a little bit of XC riding on the side.
The XC track at Cwmcarn is a little jewel. Most of you guys out there have probably ridden it already but some new jumps and berms on the final descent are a really nice bit of work, making it fast, scary and a lot of fun.
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Back to the DH racing and despite Mullane breaking a rear mech literally ‘just riding along’, things were looking ok for the main race. Uplifts were running smoother and the course drying out meant tyres were being swapped on an hourly basis. Our first rider down the hill was the demon Drew. He’s been riding well recently so we were hoping to see a stormer in the senior class, he came past us looking smooth but failed to hit the top spots. He’s moving up though and should peak nicely mid season.
After watching some awesome crashes on the final 4-cross style end sections we got to the Elite riders and our man Ashley ‘mundane’ Mullane. Still stoked with the unveiling of his new race kit he had a smile on his face and he unleashed the beast on the Cwmcarn DH course. A slower and harder than he thought top section was compensated for by a smooth and fast mid and lower section, we knew he’d be up for a good ride. A couple of seconds spent on pulling a fat jump for the crowds kept the sponsors happy. Ash ended up 12th, a nice ride and with double points will hopefully keep him inside the top 10 of the National Rankings after his 9th place in round one.
Muchos Big Balls has got to go to Steve Peat; perhaps starting to take seriously the threat from national champion Gee Atherton, he rode out of his skin to claim the win. He must have browned his pants on the final berm as he hit it at Mach 3 with just his front wheel in the berm and the rest of the bike in suspended animation somewhere behind it. It was a great piece of riding and shows the kind of risks these top boys have to take to nail victory.
So, that’s it for this week. We are now about to roll the Shred Van onto a boat and drive 1644km to Vigo in Northern Spain for round one of the Mountain Bike World Cup. We’ll bring you news as and when we can. If you are heading down yourselves, good luck and bon voyage, if you’re not then I hope you will tune in next week for the rundown.
Team Shred/Bikemagic.com
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Thanks to our team sponsors:
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You can soon follow the team’s summer tour at www.bikemagic.com/team or www.shredmagazine.com.
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