And we’ve landed in Fort William for the World Cup – we’ve been on a bit of a road trip from the Ae Forest BDS, over to the Tweed Valley and then up to the mighty Fort.
Last weekend was round 3 of the British Downhill Series at Ae Forest – a classic Scottish venue but the first time the British nationals have visited since 2009. We last raced Ae in 2010 for the British National Champs. Steve Peat won, we co-sponsored the race with Juice Lubes and race organiser Mike put on free beer on Saturday night. Great days!
And here’s our latest mountain of photo bangers from Wideopenmag’s Ian Lean – another cracking spread mate, good luck for the World Cup!
Tahnee Seagrave – 3rd place in elite women. Tahnee started the year with a few crashes but seems to have found her form.
How good is it to see Taylor Vernon back in the game and racing after his mega crash in 2013? Almost as good as it is to see him smash out an awesome race result. 2nd place for Tay. Tidy darts but!
Josh Bryceland was representing for the Syndicate whilst Peaty was over at the Enduro World Series. Random fact about Josh – he’s just moved in to a canal boat on his dad’s marina. 4th place for Josh but the fastest bottom split despite saying he was “struggling to get into it”.Â
Lewis Buchanan. 10th place.
Sam Dale on the number 5 plate. 9th place.
Micayla Gatto was over with Berny Kerr and Elliot Jackson representing for Pivot. It’s always great to see new faces races in the UK. 4th place overall but interestingly she managed to outpace 3rd place Tahnee on the majority of splits. Come back soon!
Harry Heath! Baz took second place at the Tweed Love dual slalom and 14th place at the downhill. Not a bad week’s work for Baz!
It’s an absolute treat to see Sam Hill racing the British Nationals. Sam came down early in the elite pack on Sunday afternoon having reportedly pulled over half way through his seeding run, waited for Gee to pass him then followed him down! In seeding and race runs Sam was fastest at the first split … but feel down to 7th place in race runs. Despite that, he scored 2nd place overall.
Berny Kerr – 19th place. If there was a prize for style he’d be much, much higher up the ranking.
Josh Lowe – didn’t score a top result but looked great on track so he’s getting his photo included!
Harry Molloy – another fast, talented, young UK racer. Harry is looking fast with a 12th place  proving that he can cut it with the World’s best.
And Manon Carpenter – elite women’s winner and fast on track to take the series overall. Manon was just 14 seconds behind male elite winner Marc Beaumont and only 5MPH slower than him at the speed trap. MASSIVE good luck for Fort William Manon!
It’s a foolish man that bets against Gee – but this week it would have paid off. After a mega crash on the Cen Bathro gap in practice he couldn’t manage higher than 5th place. Gee was by far the fastest at the speed trap clocking 36MPH.
And the man of the weekend – Marc Beaumont. Number 2 plate, number 1 on the day, he was stoked. An awesome start to World Cup week.
