Alpine Bikes Winter Series – Round 2, Innerleithen

After a well received first round, expectations were high for round two. The usual questions were running through riders heads in the run up to the event however; was it going to rain, was it going to snow heavily and send things the way of the canceled Hamsterley events?

Check the results, pics and race story inside:Words: Alasdair MacLennan. Pics: Ian MacLennan


In the end, it turned out to be pretty reasonable weather given just how much snow the UK has had in the four weeks since the last round was run. With a sprinkling of rain to keep the surface of the already muddy track slick, the clever money was on waiting to let the first truckloads of riders clear the worst of the slime from the track, leaving the way much clearer later on. It also gave the excuse for another bacon roll before starting that much loathed ride along the road to the uplift point.


Following a mixture of classic Innerleithen, interspersed with some interesting detours and links, it was a feat of facing your demons for the first few hundred yards. Straight out of the start hut you were treated to a dark alleyway of trees, wet roots, and off camber mud which quickly gave way to what is now virtually infamous steep section first created by the hands of Steve Dees some five years ago. Oh yes, so very steep. Log drop into root drop into rooty corner into more roots. Not to mention that this is virtually impossible to stop on, covered in mud and with lots of loose rocks to keep things interesting. The roots were originally easy but now they have huge dugouts behind them forcing you into dropping them. You certainly don’t want to leave the ground here with only one foot in contact with your bike as many riders did on Saturday until they realized that keeping both feet on the pedals was a less painful option.


Drop across the first of the fire road crossings and back into more challenge. Two sets of evil roots greeted you like a writhing mass of white snakes in a dark wood and ensured that many riders were pinged off line despite their best efforts to stay on the straight and narrow. Get it good and you were one of the few. Hit the second set of roots too heavily and you were doing well to keep the bike moving forward, even luckier if you still had much speed. The next section was more flowing as the pace was upped although things were no less greasy. Before long, you were out onto the old bridleway with its bus stops and fast pace through the tight trees to punish those with wide bars. Sprinting across road crossing number two and into the fast and smooth Drop Zone left you overshooting the hip all weekend. By some margin too, going by the number of tyre tracks on the bank to the right.


With no less speed, the next section is tight to the wire with trees brushing both shoulders and yet more roots coming out of the loose gravel trail to catch your wheels. Fast carving turns lead through the trees and you are then onto the original motorway with its sketchy hip at the end followed shortly by ‘the gap’. Not many riders attempted this over the weekend, in fact, out of a field of over 250 riders, the number of riders attempting it could virtually be counted on the fingers of one hand. First to hit it was reining Junior World Champion, Josh Bryceland, who hit it on his first run down Saturday morning. Coming into sight visibly faster than all but the other riders hitting the same line, the idea was to pre-jump a tree stump and clear about 15ft of track to a bridleway to land on the down slope into an alley of trees. Tight, no margin for error on the run in, and mightily impressive to watch. From there you haven’t far to go to the finish; drop into the arena by way of a wet and boggy gulley with a tricky off camber turn into a second gulley before a bit of a spring to the finish line. Sub four minutes was good going for most on this difficult course which combined both technical skills and fitness, especially when the track began to start running slower on Sunday afternoon after some heavy rain on Saturday night.


After five or so practice runs on Saturday, followed by two or three for most on Sunday, there was no excuse for not knowing where your lines were when the time came for your sole race run, even if things were greasy and challenging. With no series to speak of, there of course being just two rounds instead of the more normal three, there wasn’t overall prize as a target but that didn’t stop riders going into their run all guns blazing and ready tonight for every last hundredth in a bid to get some early points against their name in the BC rankings.


The first few categories followed the usual order of Juvenile leading into Youth, with them being called to the start before the last rider in practice has even left the top. With an early rise, they still managed two runs at least to get warmed up prior to the all important run that counts.

Starting things off on the podium were Juveniles it was Stuart Wilcox in third, joining his brother Ross in second. However, taking the win with a couple of seconds to spare was George Gannicott, making it two from two. Is he going to be the man to beat this year and follow in the footsteps of his older brother Arran? Remember that this is only his second downhill race so the future certainly looks promising.


In Youth the usual suspects were in evidence, and all on a charge with the top three all managing to pull top ten overall times out of the bag. Fraser McGlone was the first man to step onto the podium with third place and a 3:24 whilst Astrix/Descent-Gear sponsored Sam Flockhart took second with a 3:23 after taking the win at round one. After making a mistake and subsequently losing out on the win at round one, Lewis Buchanan was determined to make amends for new sponsors, Empire Cycles, and managed to pull a 3:19 out of the bag to take not only the win but fifth fastest time of the day too.


Moving swiftly onto Juniors and it was here that we saw round one winner, Ronan Taylor, relegated to third spot this time round, with a 3:34. Ben Moorhouse took his Ticket2RideBC.com & Descent-Gear sponsored Socom to second with a 3:27, having chased Arran Gannicott hard although not hard enough to oust him from the top step. Arran followed his brothers’ lead and took the win with a 3:21, the 6th fastest time of the day.


In Seniors, Ecosse Downhill Racing’s Dan Millard took third whilst the now virtually local Martin Young took second with a 3:37, just nine tenths back from Angus Kean on the top step.

Masters now, although master of what is still awaiting discovery! It was a Descend-Hamsterley sandwich on the podium with Thomas Reed taking third for their team with a 3:50 whilst team mate Zac Hubery took the win, just a quarter of a second ahead of second placed Mark Weightman.


Veterans had Neil Wilson of The Hub in the Forest sit with third spot on the podium and a time of 3:57. But it was all about the new boy taking on the old this weekend with Stevie Boyd, the new man in Vets, going up against the grand master, Alastair MacLennan. In the end, Off Beat Bikes’ Alastair just held onto the win but by a much reduced winning margin compared to that which he is used to. 3:43 vs. 3:46 shows both are on the pace and that there may be some fireworks later on in the year as they battle it out for top honors come the end of the season.


Jack Reading may not have had the ideal run but the Ellsworth sponsored rider still managed to take the win with a 3:22 and just over two seconds margin to Second Placed Scott Mears, onboard his new team of Fox/Zumbi. Ben Hall is finally onboard a new bike and the Trek Session seems to be working well for him in his 3:25 and third place is anything to go by.


Moving on to the Women, both Elite and non-Elite riders were in the single category and the top four were all the former. Sarah Newman just managed to sneak into third for her sponsors, Pure Riders, with a 4:12. Helen Gaskell has moved on from her previous long term sponsor and is now riding for the 4Mountains Fox/Zumbi team. Second place with a 4:04 behind Trek’s Tracy Moseley was a good start to the relationship. However, Tracy managed to School them all with her time of 3:39 which put her well into the fast men’s times and made it two rounds from two.


Last category of the day was the Elite men as always. With less than a month to go to the start of the season, these guys are all keen to see how they’re pacing with their competition and find out just how effective that winter training regime has been. Tom Braithwaite is another top rider on board the Session 88 this season and pushed his hard all the way to the line for Hope Factory/23 Degrees to take second place, just six hundredths down on The Syndicate’s Josh Bryceland in first. When you consider that that’s over 3 minutes and 14 seconds, it’s even more impressive that two top riders can be just so close on what is a very challenging track. However, just as impressive was the result that Pete Williams managed to put in. Also onboard a new bike, this time the 2009 MSC, he had a hard crash up top on Sunday morning and yet come crunch time, managed to post a time just 2.5 seconds away from two seasoned World Cup riders in his first year of riding Elite.


So there we have it, short and sweet with two rounds but no poorer for it. Alpine Bikes, Fox and the SDA came together to provide the usual smooth organization we have come to expect in Scotland. Even the weather wasn’t as bad as we have come to expect over the past few seasons of winter racing, despite there being heavy snowfall in the period between the two races. If this was your first time racing and fancy giving it another bash then usual scrum for entries into the Scottish series starts in a couple of days so you’d best get onto www.sda-races.com sharpish. Behind the scenes, Alan Cathro will be keeping the programmer locked into the basement so if there are any problems, they should be quickly resolved.


Full results can be found online at www.sda-races.com

www.alpinebikes.com / www.trekbikes.com / www.foxeurope.com

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