Olympic Test Event

With the opportunity of a lifetime, thanks to Martyn Salt, I was invited to race the Olympic Test Event at Hadleigh Farm. With over 5,000 spectators I could imagine the atmosphere being huge.

My brother and I headed over to the course at Hadleigh early Friday morning to pick up our training number and get some practice laps in both on Friday and Saturday. The course was mainly all man made with boulders mixed in along with long grass climbs and swooping descents.

With the high standard of riders and my first International experience I wasn’t expecting a good result but just to get the experience and have a good fight for positions.

At 2pm on Sunday with temperatures reaching 26degrees the gun went and we were off, starting on the last row being gridded 43^rd it was going to be a battle to try and move up the field.

After the 3^rd corner of the small 0.5km start loop a few riders went down in a crash just in front of me, luckily I managed to hop around them and chase for a higher position.

After fighting with elbows, stopping, starting and queuing, we waited at the top of the descents due to a high number of us trying to get onto one singletrack. After making my way up to approx 38^th, I suffered a crash damaging my knee and loosing valuable positions.

After a minute my knee stopped hurting and I could eventually push on and start chasing back I only managed to get back to my starting position of 43^rd before coming under the 80% cut off time and finishing after 4 laps.

Although I had really good legs, the start was so fast and being gridded on the last row doesn’t help if you don’t move up a few positions before the first singletrack.

However I was there for the experience and atmosphere which was amazing. So many people were cheering me on which made me push harder than ever, so a big thanks to everyone for rooting me on! The atmosphere is going to be huge when there is going to be over 20,000 spectators for the actual Olympics.

Now its time to take a break from racing and chill out taking it easy before racing the Team Event at Torq 12:12.

Bontrager 24/12

On Saturday morning my brother and I drove down to Plymouth to take on the Bontrager 24/12 Male team of 4 with our fellow Torq Riders.

As the lap was too long for a pre ride we went off the video that was published up the week before the event, which was actually perfect as when ii did race round i roughly knew where i was going or what was coming up!

From the start our secret weapon Dan McConnell from Torq Australia took the challenge of the 1^st lap and brought us into the lead from the off with a good margin back to 2nd!

By the time i went out we had at least a 3minute gap back to second. The first climb of the course was a stinger to go straight into but actually worked as a good warm up into the lap before heading through the wooded singletrack.

The course was well designed and really good with long climbs and sweet singletrack! The best part was always the final downhill singletrack as for one it was the end of the lap but 2, it was flat out, fast and flowing with a fireroad at the top to gather your speed into it.

By the time we were half way through we had a 25minute lead on second but we continued to push hard averaging 40minute laps. Although by night time there was a lot of Dew around which made the course really slippery and after an almost big crash that i narrowly managed to stay up on, I decided to take the rest easy as it wasn’t worth risking crashing just for sake a few extra minutes.

So by the time 12am came we had a lap up over our rivals and took the Bontrager 24/12 Male Team of 4 Win. Overall a good weekend for the team with the result and good team banter which always makes it more enjoyable!
Unfortunately got no photos for this one but will have for the next one!

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