Ladies and gents – we’re celebrating over here at Wideopenmag having scored two killer results at Round 1 of the Halo British Downhill Series this weekend at Combe Sydenham.
Elite rider Rich Thomas dropped into the finish line and into a damn-fine 5th place overall. Rich took the hot-seat and batted off waves of competition – including Peaty – until he gave up his seat to Brendan Fairclough.
Rich took a place on the podium, a Hope trophy and £150 for his troubles. In his own words in the pits straight after podiums he told me “I don’t know how to feel – it hasn’t really sunk in yet. I first raced here when I was a nipper and got my photo taken with Steve. To come down and take a podium here is unbelievable”.
Rich joined the team this year after a tough 2011 and has already scored an awesome result at the first round of the World Cup – an elite national podium is proof enough to us that he’s back on form!
Our second great result came from Expert rider Jay Williamson. This was his first National since moving up from Junior and was a real ‘wait and see’ for how he could perform in such a tough catagory. He’s done super well at the regional winter races and has been on top form lately but you can never quite be sure how that will translate against the big-dogs.
Jay set off and was charging until the bottom woods when he got caught up in a red-flag and had to go back for a re-run. Back in the start hut he managed to get his head back together and storm out a 6th place – narrowly missing a podium but taking a killer result in a cat dominated by super-fast racers.
Jay was a bit bummed out at the finished line as he could clearly see how close he was to a podium and his top-5 goal for the weekend – but is using it to stay hungry for the next race. We’re super excited to see Jay keep storming this year.
Another team-member to up his game for the new year was team mechanic Chaz Curry. Chaz was on fire this weekend and spent literally every second making sure the riders were fed, watered and had bikes that were running like a dream.
Thanks to plenty of prep work there were no mechanical disasters but Chaz was able to wield his new Unior tools/Fenwicks kit to keep the Nukeproof Scalp race-bikes running tight, shovel food down everyone’s necks and to head up to the start-line with the guys for their race runs. Chaz is a huge part of our plan to step up the race-team to a new level this year and did a grand job throughout – nice one big-man!
Thanks to everyone that has helped the race team get to this stage and who put on a great event on the weekend.
That’s the British Downhill Series crew for putting on a great event and our sponsors Nukeproof, Conti Tyres, Fox Europe, Five Ten, Action Cameras, Unior Tools, RoostDH, TF Tuned Shox and Fenwicks.
