Watch this for another chance to win a Diamondback Sabbath DH frame OR a holiday to Morzine with Riders Retreat. You aint getting goodies like that on any of the other edits now are ya?!
If you don’t know by now here’s the score – we’ve got FIVE Diamondback Sabbath DH frames to give away and two holidays with Riders Retreat to Morzine. We’ll do a video at every race and a competition for every video!
So who won the frame from Rd2? Sean Hassard from Aberdeenshire correctly answered the fiendish question and will be getting a frame any minute! Nice one fella!
Thanks to Diamondback Bikes, Riders Retreat and Loaded components for making all this happen. Thanks also to the evil genius Paul Roberts for creating it all.
The pits at this weekend’s Halo BritishDHSeries round were the bomb…
When I wasn’t soaking up the action on track I was zipping round the pits gossiping to people, snapping photos and generally making a nuisance of myself. Here’s what went down outside the tape…
Si and Dave wanted to up their game this season and make every race village like a mini World-Cup. Here’s the view from the last section of the track BEFORE they’d even put up the massive inflatable Halo arch and Monster can. The pits were buzzing all weekend.
Sixpack and Propain had a bit of a nightmare getting to the track with Wayne ending up having to get towed to and from the race! Luckily - they got their in one piece and showed off some brand new product. The Millenium bars shown here are brand spanking new pre-release samples - we’ve got a set sat here ready for testing! Look out for Sixpack in your local bike shop sometime soon…
Wayne also brought the family along – showing off some fly new Propain race kit.
The guys at Bullit Distro were over from Cardiff and showing off their Kali Protectives and El Gallo kit. Our young gun dirt jump team rider Charlie Watts came 6th at Dirt Wars on the weekend wearing the piss-pott lid below. It’s a fancy bonded one-piece carbon thing and is unbelievably bloody light. Seriously, bloody light. Get over to their stand at the next round and take a look.
Love it or hate it – Monster Energy were out in force keeping us all buzzing with zillions of free cans of juice, all dealt out the back of the monster Monster truck.
Ison distribution dropped the bomb this round with a huge stand stacked with product from TSG, Halo, Renthal, ODI and loads more. How nice does this Oakley lid look?
This is our mate Alan Milway, who runs MXFitness. Most of the time he’s Danny Hart’s mate too – though as his fitness trainer you’ve gotta wonder if that’s always the case! Alan was working hard on race-day to get Dan warmed up and ready to pin it. Apparently he can’t do anything about the hill-billy mullet though!
Rose Bikes had an awesome weekend – not only did they bring down the full fleet of bikes to show off, but Katy Curd went and won the bloody race on this one. Rose are pretty new in the UK but are absolutely MASSIVE in Germany. Stay tuned for more on them – I brought home their 160mm all mountain ‘Uncle Jimbo’ and will be showing it off in Wideopen.
Katy didn’t just win the Elite women’s title – she also took the prize for riding One Giant Leap Llangollen’s shady ass wobbly bike the furthest. The trick was to go no-handed apparently.
It goes without saying that the Atherton’s were out in force all weekend… If you want to be a world champ and still hit up the beer tent, you’d do worse than follow Gee’s example.
Driftmtb is a brand new company run by two fellas from the South West who got sick of smashing holes in their foks at Gawton. What you’ve got here is a stick on titanium guard for your fork’s lower leg. Even better, they’re working with Regal Graphics to offer custom graphics options.
Mono decided to slum it and take a weekend off travelling the world for MTBCut and come see some proper racing. Small race – small camera. Check out his edit… It’s a banger.
The new Dirt Norco team are another awesome prescence on the scene this season and are adding a much needed World Cup vibe to the nationals. On the right you’ve got Ben and Stanny’s mechanic/nanny Ali Beckett. On the left is Owen, Norco’s UK Design Engineer who has joined the Norco team to help design a couple of brand new bikes and was doing a bit of research with the guys. New Norcos for 2012 by the sounds of things…
Let’s not forget our mate Tony Parodi who spent the entire weekend on the microphone. If you want a lesson in bad, bad jokes – this is your man.
Sorry – it’s another shot of Wayne. The beer tent was a GOOD SHOUT, not just for lubing up us journos. Cold beers, World Cup football and a bit of shade for yer old lady to chill in were a nice touch. More please.
Ahh Keith – World Champ photographer. This is Keith’s rainbow stripes camera strap - hand made and given to him by Sam Hill’s sis. He loves it…
It’s not strictly pit-chat but we’ve got to say a big, BIG get well soon to anyone that’s nursing wounds after the race. It was a big, gnarly track and it claimed a few victims over the weekend. The two that I know about are Harry Phillips who bust his collar bone and Ellie Maxfield who broke her leg and is currently holed up in Wrexham hospital. Get healed up guys!
Last but not least, we’ve got to give these two a shout – Wayne and Martin from One Giant Leap Llangollen. Martin is the farmer and mastermind behind the track and Wayne is his brother in law and helps with the Facebook/website stuff. BIG thanks to these guys for making Llan happen. Legends!
That’s it for now – the Wideopen race vid will be out tomorrow evening with another chance to win a Diamondback Sabbath DH frame set and a holiday to Morzine with Riders Retreat! Stay tuned!
Just landed back after a roasting hot weekend at the National at Llangollen -
It was a hell of a weekend with a big, rough, loose track that was kicking a lot of riders’ asses. Brendan and Katy Curd stomped to the finish and took the wins. Men’s podium went Brendan, Gee, Dan. Girls went Katy, Monet Adams, Harriette Latchem.
More later – just chilling with a beer… Long weekend!
Chatel Razorbike 2010
This is the third year of the Chatel Razorbike which consists of two races, a mass start race from the top of the mountain to the bottom and also a 4X race – all on snow.
Racing on snow is nothing new, but it is often limited to ‘invite only’ style races, and despite the huge amounts of snow we had in the UK this winter, not something we often get a chance to race on in the UK, so it was great to see that this race was open to all.
Indeed, the event had local race feel to it, with a lot of the riders and racers knowing each other from the race scene. The organisation was typically French laissez-faire, when I asked what time they would be racing I was simply told “maybe quite soon as the weather might change”, a few more cups of coffee and roll-up cigarettes and they started making their way to the top.
There was €1500 prize money on offer, with the event well supported by industry sponsors and also the Chatel Tourist Office, showing their commitment to mountain biking in the area – something that shinesthrough at the Bike Park here in the summer.
Derby/mass start
The first event of the day was the mass start race down from the top of the mountain to the bottom, a vertical descent of just under 1km. Clement Benoit won this round in a blistering 7m 44s with the next rider (Nils Verniol) 52 seconds behind him. The rest of the pack was fairly evenly spread with the later riders coming in at just over 30 minutes. I guess the snow separates the men from the boys.
4X
The main event was the four cross race. Very much like a typical 4X track we might have in the UK, although slightly steeper, and of course on snow. My initial thought was that there wouldn’t be anywhere to overtake. However, the snow clearly slowed the pace down and made it difficult to stay to any one racing line, meaning that there were a fair few swaps of the lead between the start and finish making for some pretty good racing.
The weather in the week up to the race had been decidedly warm, up to 19degrees at times, with the weather on the day around the 14degrees mark. There had also been rain the previous night and throughout the morning. This made the snow very slushy and would be neigh on impossible for a bike to ride through. Fortunately the course builders did a great job of preparing the course with salt and side slipping down it on skis, the cumulative result of which was a surprisingly firm course, with the tyres only penetrating perhaps 3-4 cm through the snow – perfect!
The course also had some reasonable size jumps in it, again nothing you wouldn’t see on a typical 4X track, but the fact that they were landing on snow would certainly make me think twice. Sure enough, those that hadn’t got their suspension set up or their landing right were quickly bucked off or skidded off line and out of the race.
Thanks to Paul at Riders Retreat for pulling this together. Look out for blog updates from him this summer and don’t miss your chance to win a holiday with RR by watching our video from Round 3 of the BritishDHSeries.
Lee Huskinson, Chris Akrigg & Oscar Golding interviews, Orange Five DIVA test, Ride bikes in Poland, Winter race reports and much more! Click the cover above!
