Team Wideopenmag’s Mark Scott scores an awesome result at the 1st Enduro World Series of 2014.
Mark and the Trippin crew had spent the month of the race out in New Zealand sampling Kiwi dirt, riding in helis and having a blast. They based themselves in Kiwi mountain bike mecca Queenstown for the first part of the trip before hitting the road for the big race.
“The lead up to the race for us was quite chilled. We flew in to Auckland on the Sunday and trucked down to Rotorua in the rent-a-dent Hiace of dreams. Monday was food shopping and the made it out for a quick spin with local Matt Walker. It seemed that quite a few EWS guys had been there for quite a bit while trying to get sneaky practice in. It was another day off on Tuesday with only registration for the race and getting prepped for practice from Wednesday”
Mark has been working hard with Alan Milway over the winter to get him race fit and to help his his race-craft. For Rotorua, the plan leading up to the race was to take it stead and not go to hard. A tough call considering all the awesome riding to be had in Rotorua … and with Crankworx blazing in the background.
“The whole crankworx events are always cool to be a part of, all the top riders from every discipline are in town and it makes it feel like quite a big deal to be part of.
For me and the boys, we managed 2 of runs of every stage. We felt comfortable after that and didn’t want to waste any valuable energy for the race! Everyone was a bit nervous of the rain forecast for race day to, the stages were technical enough in the dry, rain would have caused some excessive struggling!”
Race day was a tough one … but when is an Enduro World Series not going to be tough?
“I scored 28th overall and it was a brutal race! I had 3 big over the bars crashes and lost a shoe mid-stage! It was carnage! There were a lot of locals in the line up too which made it tough. I’m happy though and I got some decent points out of it. I had good speed and my pace picked up as I got deeper in to the race”.
Awesome work Mark! Check out the highlights on the official video below.
