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It’s about this time of year, as your feet are freezing into your shoes as you bash out a few winter road miles, that you begin to ponder on days gone by. You think of the season, when we were cursing about going away every weekend, and racing so often that you’re slumped over in your office chair every monday afternoon wishing your body had time to recover before the next race.
It’s with fondness that you see these days – the body doesn’t have the capacity to remember pain and this is just as well.
I think last time we spoke to you guys it was just after Fort William, our man Mullane had spooned the whole weekend by missing his start in the World Cup final and we were all feeling a little gutted for him.
Lucky for us the boy came good and completed his assault on the Welsh Dragon Series with an awesome ride to finish 2nd place overall.
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The XC team didn’t have such a great year, a reasonable performance at Sleepless saw us inside the top 15 and we finished up 3rd place in the Trek 6-4-2 Enduro Series team category, thanks to a really tough battle at the start of the season in a boggy Newnham Park and a contrasting heatwave at Builth Wells. I guess our greatest achievement was managing to drive around 12,000 miles to race bikes this year at some 30 events across Europe and the UK.
As far as Solo performances go we were pretty happy for Andy Carnell, ending up inside the top 30 of the national rankings in the masters class. This is probably the toughest class in UK mountain biking at the moment.
OK, here’s my quick rundown of the Shred/Bikemagic.com team season.
Best DH race…
MTB World Cup, Vigo, Spain. This was an awesome event, it’s on the calendar next year and it is worth going.
Best XC race…
Roc D’azur, S. France. Sometimes biggest is best and this is the proof. No mountain bike racer can call themselves complete until they have ridden the roc. Easy to get to, easy to enter but not easy to ride this is the best race in Europe. 55km’s of awesome trails.
Best piece of equipment…
Well you’ve got to hand it to the Cove’s. Some are on their 3rd season and still riding as good as the day they arrived. Next up would be Shimano shoes, do they ever wear out?
Best guest rider…
Abi Greenaway, it’s always good to have a girl on the squad – even if for only one race – shame she had to kick the ass off of our lap times!
Best rider…
Well you’ve got to hand it to Ashley Mullane, he races every weekend, broke his neck, 2 pairs of bars, 2 helmets, 3 jerseys and about 4 saddles in various crashes but he still gets up and carries on. Nice work.
Best sponsor…
Well thanks to all of our sponsors, their continued support is amazing. Special thanks have to go to Bikemagic who helped pay some of the bills this year and Silverfish for their ongoing support. Next year it is all change and a bit of hark back to the old days of the Shred Team, some new riders and some new events. We’ll keep you posted and thanks for following our progress through the year.
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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