Rose Bikes at Llangollen National Champs

Katy Curd was placed 2nd onboard her Rose BeefcakeSL[PI= size=l align=c][/PI] at this years downhill National Champs, held at Llangollen in North Wales, July 23-24. Beating previous National Champ Jess Stone and coming in second to the current World Champion Tracy Moseley, who walked away with the National Champs title for 2011. A brilliant result for Katy, and after last weekend's success at winning the British 4X National Championships it demonstrates her multi-discplined talent in the sport and top class ranking in the UK.

Llangollen is known for being home to some of the steepest tracks in the UK and this weekend it certainly lived up to that. After only being at Llangollen a month ago for the National round it was time to head back there this time for the National Champs, the big one!

The track started up in the woods and from the word go it was hanging off the back of the bike steep! They even had a rope weaving down the side of the track for spectators to use to pull their way up and abseil their way back down- just so they could see the top of the track! If you made it past the top steep shoots and loose corners it soon spat you out at an unexpected uphill/flat section. It was a hard 10 seconds sprint, which meant if you didn’t have the power in the legs, you were going to struggle. From here it fired you out of the woods onto a fast open section and then rejoined the old track by sending you off a small step down jump.

We had all day Saturday to practice with qualifying and race runs both on the Sunday. From my first practice run on Saturday morning I had a big old smile on my face. I love riding steep technical tracks and this suited me down to the ground. It was a hard track to get to grips with, as the track would change so much between runs. You would come into a section not knowing if the berm or rut that you were relying on to make the corner would still be there or would be blown out. Because of this I was pretty much switching lines every run, but I knew at least that way when it came to race runs I would have a few options to choose from-depending on how beaten up the track was.

For qualifying on Sunday I had no idea what to expect; where I would place; how the track would be riding or even how hard I needed to push. My plan of action was to do a chilled top half, not to push too much on the steep stuff and then hammer the bottom half of the track. I had a fairly good run, I managed to hold it together through the steep section, stalling on a couple of turns but nothing major and then had had a fairly messy bottom section. As I was riding flats, I was trying to pedal but my feet were bouncing around on the pedals and I just felt all over the place, but managed to keep it together and hold on crossing the line in second place. I was 3 seconds behind Tracy Moseley so I was stoked with that, I was only half a second in front of Manon Carpenter so I knew it was close but I knew now that if I could get another clean run in for the final I could be in for a chance for a top three podium, which was my goal for the weekend.


For my race run I felt pretty nervous. Although knowing that downhill is not my main sport takes the pressure off a lot, but qualifying in 2nd I knew that I could do well and at the end of the day I was still there to try and take the win. For the first 10 seconds or so of my final run I was pretty stiff and couldn’t relax but I soon found my rhythm and started to piece together my run, hitting my lines and getting it to flow. I think I held back a little too much through the bottom half of the track, as I knew the guys pushed fairly hard for their qualifying runs making the track more than blown out and it was, but I think I was just that little bit too cautious. Despite this I crossed the line in 1st place with only Tracy to come down guaranteeing me 2nd place. Tracy came down and smashed everyone; she came across the line 8 seconds ahead of my time taking the win and becoming the new 2011 National Champion with ease! I was stoked for 2nd place though, I haven’t had the best of seasons so to be back up there with some of the UK’s top riders I was more than happy with, and to loose to the current world champion, I reckon I can live with that!



Results

Tracy Moseley; Trek; 2:37.660
Katy Curd; Rose Bikes; 2:45.617
Jess Stone; Trek Gravity Girls; 2:48.463


Thanks to http://www.girlmtnbiker.com/ for the podium shot!