Saturday saw us hit the road for the Welsh Downhill MTB Association’s (WDMBA) first official practice day at Rheola. The sun was out, the trails were bone dry and we had an awesome day of South Wales downhill. James and crew at the WDMBA got together following the demise of the Dragon Downhill series and have been working hard to bring racing back to South Wales. They’ve had a tough year getting things up and running but it finally looks like things are coming together and their first proper race will be the Rheola NPSDH round this month.

Bikes in one - bods in the other. Worked well all day.

In prep for their first big race, James and co have been hard at work giving the old Rheola track a bit of a make over. It’s still got all the favourite flat out, rough as hell Dragon sections… and Star Wars is obviously still in there… but they’ve added a few technical, loose, rooty bits to mix things up a bit. There’s a savage off-camber bit after the 1st fire road crossing that’ll cause some people issues (lots of issues if it rains on race day), a fun and pretty tech section with a nice chute just above Star Wars and to finish there’s a MASSIVE chute to drop racers into the finish arena. It’s bloody massive…

Ben Baker haulin' ass on the new Astrix Havoc R

With the track given an overhaul the boyos put on an uplift to give everyone a chance to check out the new sections and get in some shady practice before the race. The turn out was pretty good with about 30 riders and with 1 bus and 1 trailer we got about 8 runs in all day, with about 25 minute turn around. Things seemed to work pretty smoothly so no complaints at all there! And the track? Well… I had a f-ckin good time – It’s a great mix of traditional wideopen Dragon’s style and much tighter, twistier, technical stuff. Should be a hell of a good race.

New chute above star wars - it's rougher and steeper than it looks!

This is Jay - he turned up on his hardtail and tore it up all day. Nice to meet you mate!

WDMBA's JT sortin' shit out

Team Leisure Lakes were in the house getting warmed up for a night on the lash in Bristol.

Devon Griffiths over the roots on his Nicolai...

That’s all for now – thanks to James and the crew at WDMBA for a great day out and big thanks to Tim Joyce for letting us use his snaps. You can see his complete album over on Pinkbike. Cheers all!

Jamie News