We caught up with Jason Moeschler after he’d just won the prologue of the inaugural Epic Cymru race last week. He’d just come from winning the epic Downieville race, packed his bike and some tyres and headed over to Wales to do an all together different event. Instead of a well-known track on his doorstep, he’d be racing on-sight for five days over 200km – with timed uphills and timed downhill sections (with uphill bits in it). The 120mm travel bike (that we previewed here) was all he needed to take on stages as disparate as Margam’s rolling deer park and downhill stages at Bike Park Wales and Mountain Ash.
Jason said on his Facebook page: “I did my best to bring the most balanced bike possible – something that would compete with the XC guys in the climbing stages, and the DH guys in the Enduro stages. The Cannondale Bicycles Habit was the bike. I used WTB Riddler 2.4 Light/Fast rolling tires, which many thought to be a roll of the dice. But the tires worked perfectly. In fact, the Riddlers even delivered a stage win, in the rain and mud on the final day. Other unique items in the build were the new WTB Ci24 carbon rims, and Shimano Cycling XTR Di2, which was using the Syncro function. Overall, the bike did exactly what I needed, and I couldn’t have made a better choice.”
We’ll be having a full feature on the cracking event in a future issue of Singletrack, based on Chipps’ experiences at the event (he barely bothered the Top 100 by the way) but in the meantime, you can catch up on the chat at Epic Cymru’s Facebook page.