What A Weekender!

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We’re just unpacking from the weekend’s Shimano Singletrack Weekender and wanted to bring you a quick report from the event. Later on, there’ll be a fully searchable results story, but until that’s wrangled to our satisfaction, you’ll have to just sit back and enjoy our take on things.

 

Some actual summer.
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Julia Hobson not quite making the skinny
'Eyes front and trawl' seemed the best duck method

Let’s start with the weather, always a hot topic when mentioning events in the UK this ‘summer’.
Well, it was dry! There was wetness on Friday, which we said was just to damp down the dust, and then that was it! The skies were cloudy, but not so much that people didn’t come away with the now-traditional panda-eye tans.

The ducks claim another victim
'One day, lad, this will all be a race venue'

The people came and they hung out and rode bikes and heckled each other and everyone seemed to think that the location, the courses and the atmosphere were all top notch. The Shimano/Madison convoy showed up during Friday’s showers and proceeded to banner everything up so that the stark quarry was once again turned into a colourful race venue.

Saturday morning saw downhill course inspection as well as a lot of riders having sneaky practice goes at the ‘harder than last year’ trials obstacles. In addition to the traditional tests of balance like the narrow pond-crossing plank and the seesaw, there was also an optional duck catching pond crossing as well as a ‘real’ trials obstacle.

 

An Orange on the hillclimb trials section.
Beate conquers the (rather wet) skinny obstacle.

This year all the riders got two downhill runs, allowing riders to either take the first run as a cautious exploration, or to go flat-out and keep a run spare in case something went wrong. The widely taped course also allowed the clever riders some very different lines that saved time – all the more important now that the new rules rewarded faster riders who made it into the top times.

Some of the crowds watching the downhill

After the two runs, riders chilled out or made the most of the two pumptracks at Lee Quarry. Singular Sam and the Shimano guys managed to get the bonfire lit so that it was roaring by the time the skies darkened. Meanwhile, the Hope Technology Pumptrack Challenge took place, with riders timed on a flying lap of the pump track. As you might expect, the youngsters mostly showed all the old-timers how it was done with plenty of sub 10-second times.

Strong breeze not pictured
Don't try this at home, kids.

The evening faded to black and the group round the campfire thinned (and got closer and closer to the fire).

Sunday was dry and breezy. The noon start for the cross country allowed racers to see their combined downhill times and trials penalties while seeing how they fared against their mates. This year’s harder obstacles and the exaggerated downhill penalties meant that the field was nicely spread out. Only two riders went off a minute before midday, with the biggest group of riders being back with seven, eight or nine minutes of catching up to do. Even Nick Craig started five minutes back, thanks to a rubber duck incident… And that penalty was the decider as he was unable to catch up with John Hopkinson for the overall first prize. (It might also have been something to do with the cheese and wine Nick was on the night before…) Luckily the Craig pride was kept intact as son Thomas won the Junior race and Nick himself did take the Vet title…

Results:

Junior Men

1. Tom Craig

2. Tom Simpson

3. Nial Oxley

Senior Women

1. Julia Hobson

2. Esther Hobson

3. Kat Crompton

Senior Men

1. John Hopkinson

2. Carl Draper

3. Andrew Walker

Vet Women

1. Kirsty Forrester

2. Beate Kubitz

3. Sue Hawkridge

Vet Men

1. Nick Craig

2. Stuart Rider

3. Craig Scott

'Go!'
Craigy chases on the slabs

Here’s the forum thread for comments.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/stw-weekender-comment-and-pictures-thread

And finally a couple of videos of the event:

First from Dave Haygarth, who got most of Saturday’s fun in the bag.

Dave was busy racing on Sunday, but luckily the Shooters Media folks who live at the bottom of the hill saw the event and wandered up with a camera, so here’s their take on Sunday’s fun.

http://vimeo.com/45796210

We’ll have a bit of a feature in the next magazine. But in the meantime, here are just some of Sam Needham’s beautiful photos from the event:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 22 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

More posts from Chipps

Comments (7)

    Fantastic weekend-er once again thanks to y’all!

    Fantastic weekend again guys, thanks a lot for all the organisational efforts from everyone involved, and cheers to the riders for making it what it is!

    What they said ^

    Please do it again…..

    any e.t.a. news on the results, team?

    Likely Monday now. Sorry for the delay but our tech team was halved by illness on Friday. The results wil be a database so you can find out all kinds of stuff like average speed, total distance etc. plus how you ‘could’ have done if you’d not stuffed up that third trials obstacle :-). It will be worth the wait.

    There’s a DH rider gallery going up too on Monday – subject to fit techies.

    Both will be Premier only but if you are not a subscriber contacting subs@singletrackworld.com with your full name and rider number will get you a voucher code to access everything

    When is the results table going to be published?

    Still no results? Bit of a poor show now really.

    Could you not just fire up a list of finishing positions now and then get the tech stuff up as soon as after that.

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