Race Report: Irish Downhill Mountain Bike Series 2022, The Gap

What a glorious day in the Emerald Island, with plenty of Sun, no rain and loamy trails. The last race of the Irish Downhill Mountain Bike Series of 2022 in The GAP, next to Dublin, perfect location and weather to close the downhill season and wrap the series on a high note with most of the big names of Irish downhill scene. Practice on Saturday, seeding Sunday morning and race in the afternoon was the planned agenda for the weekend. Saturday every rider had the opportunity to do several practice runs without many issues. The terrain was in perfect conditions with some freshly cut sections and a brand new feature, a bridge, that certainly made the public enjoy that section of the track. Sunday started bit behind schedule with some red flags and crashes that took more time than expected to get the seeding restarted. After U14, U16 and Women category decision was taken to count the seeding run as the race run.

In the women category the series leader Leah Maunsell was away for the EWS races in mainland Europe and young Hanna Mullin was also trying her chances on the EWS. Cat Brady came out swigging and managed a first position on a close battle with Lilian Tobin with a tiny margin of just 0:00.72. Cat had great start leading in the first two sectors but it was Lilian who pushed hard on the last sector and almost recovered all the time she lost on the first two. Melissa Anderson had the best time on the initial sector but lost most of her 4s difference on the bottom section, the most technical and step of the race track.

On the men category everyone was excited to see the battle for the overall win, with series leader Matheus Neitzke facing two of the most known names of the Irish downhill scene, Ronan Dunne and Christopher Cumming. In the mix also Clerkin Niall, Ross Callaghan and some more contenders. The overall could change easily on this race so expectations were high. Due to the changed schedule and no seeding run riders ended up doing their runs on different moments so the usual waiting for the last rider to drop was not in place. Clerkin Niall put a hell of a first section but it was Matheus who grabbed best time on second sector and Ronan Dunne on the third. Matheus was leading on the second sector by 0.090 but Ronan managed to get back 1.88s on the last sector and won the race by mere 0:00.62.

With those results the overall series leader on Women category was Leah Maunsell and on the Men category was Matheus Neitzke who will be holding the number 1 plate for next year.

---

Race Results

Race full results

---

Overal Series Results

---

Overal Series Results