Richards secures Commonwealth title with perfect ride at Cannock Chase

England’s Evie Richards stormed to an incredible gold medal after a dominant performance in the women’s mountain bike race at the Birmingham Commonwea …

By ben_haworth

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Richards secures Commonwealth title with perfect ride at Cannock Chase

It was an excellent ride, but given she fell off at one point, not perfect. 😉

“Dominant performance” you can have

And either way, still far better than I could do.

She didn’t fall off, she dabbed 😀

“Incredible”? She’s the current UCI World XCO champion. I’d have thought it very credible, was hardly a stacked field, I’d have assumed she’d win without seeing any reports.

Given that Isla beat Evie at the nationals the other week, hardly a foregone conclusion that Evie would win. I hope that they both do well for the rest of season and at worlds.

Was it just follow the dog, or did they include the monkey?

@mos, there is a pretty big gap between isla and Evie to be fair. Not sure what happened at the nationals but Evie is by far the stronger athlete and I can see why @Blazin-saddles said that.

Had I been aware that there were only 9 riders in the field and one was Evie I would have put my house on her winning. I will admit to being a bit of a fan boi (if a fat old man can be a boi) I just love her attitude, her strength, and her determination to get better and better. If she sorts out this back issue I think she will have a good few years of success ahead of her.

Seeing her win put a big smile on my face yesterday. Well done Evie.
As for the rest of the field, she can only race the field that turns up on the start line.

Given she has missed a lot of the season due to a back injury which I think she is still recovering from and she had Covid recently, it really wasn’t guaranteed.

The course was also very flat which didn’t play to Isla’s strengths unfortunately.

I thought her interview afterwards was interesting; She mentioned having the Olympic & World champions in this country, but not seeing enough riders coming through in the sport; and trying to inspire kids to take up the sport, as ‘MTB is cool’. If she can’t inspire them, then nobody can.

Given she has missed a lot of the season due to a back injury which I think she is still recovering from and she had Covid recently, it really wasn’t guaranteed.

Yep, looking at her XCO results this year would not make me think it was guaranteed either but then it is the Commonwealth games where I (a 55 year old man who has never done a days training in his life) could have competed with the last place TT entrant who took almost 1hr 10m for a 22 mile course!