They might not have the big pro names of Diamond Back, but Kona certainly collected their fair share of prizes at the weekend:

Over to Team Kona Ford Focus Manager Russ Carty (who curiously doesn’t say where he came in his race?);

Well another sunny weekend and a great venue for the first round of the national points cross country, we arrived on Saturday and myself, our mechanic Paul and Ciaran went for a pre ride of the course. It was great, no big hills but very technical and very fast.

Sunday – Race Day

Again another early start and our first rider out was John Veness in the master men. John had a very good year last year and has had a good start to this year with a couple of early season road wins.

On his first lap he was leading a pack of three riders and was looking very strong, on his second lap he had pulled a gap of 10 seconds, then for the next lap he had increased the gap to over 30 seconds and in the end he had a comfortable win.

Dave McMullen rode in the Grand Veteran men and had a similar race to John and again took the win, Dan Oliver had a strong race and finished 6th in juniors.

In the Pro Elite race John Webb, Jamie Newall and Sam Gardner all had a good start, but this race proved to be very hard and the pace was very fast, the race ended up with Sam in 9th, Jamie 23rd and John 25th.

Next was Becky Milborn last year she won the Expert Women series so she had to move up to the pro elite category and this is one big leap, but she did well in her first pro race of the year and finished 7th.

In the Sport race we had our customer services guy Ciaran, our pro elite down hiller Ross and our team mechanic Paul.

Ross had to pull out due to his bad back, but Ciaran and Paul both finished with excellent results.

So overall a great weekend, next week we are at the Garmish Classic in Germany, so speak to you then.

Russell