Congratulations to all those folk out there who are still alive – if not moving much – after this weekend’s Red Bull.
The sun shone, and the course was as blessed with swoopy twisting singletrack, but cursed with lumpy “killing fields” as ever. Some people went fast, some people stopped, other people just lost it completely. We’ll get full results and some sort of twisted report up shortly (when the Red Bull site starts working) but until then here’s a picture of the sickest but most scarily impressive riders there.

Solo winner Ben Bardsley looks delighted, while Nikki (his girlfriend apparently) remembers what her mum said about strange men and sweets!

 
Ben Bardsley took the mens 24hr solo title with an astonishing 30 laps (that’s nearly 300 miles) on his Orange Mr XC, while Schwinn’s Nikki Davies was the only solo woman but beat a lot of the solo men anyway. The least we could do was buy them an ice cream.
At the “how can they go that fast for that long” end of things Giant turned up with their huge shiny truck, trials display team and a huge video screen that even played the German Grand prix live (in German). The truck also contained a full world cup level team, to win the elite race ahead of Diamond Back.
As Jan Weever of Giant said this morning “In one word, it was PERFEKT this weekend. Nice event, good wetter, good teamwork, a lot enthosiasm and finally the victory !! I felt this very good feeling with the team. Everybody was hard working, no levels no groups, just positive thinking and working on the best result possible, really great. Also the english help, was perfekt.”
“Okay this it is for now the short impression, one thing I think is good, as Giant we have to continue to enter in this kind of events and on this pleasant base, you can count on me for sure !!!!!”
Gary Fisher turned up on his big new 29″ wheel bikes, signed stuff and rode like a trooper, pulling double laps when the rest of the team were doing singles.
Brant Richards devoted his entire weekend to beating Cycling Plus’s Paul Vincent in the solo event. He managed to keep his singlespeed On-One rolling till the Sunday afternoon finish, after Paul had packed in at midnight when the on site masseurs said they could fix his back but he’d be in again every two laps.
As for the huge masses of ‘real riders’ we’ll leave it to the forum to tell the real Red Bull stories.