The hangovers and scuffed knees have almost worn off from our dual race and End of Season party.
Here’s a quick look back at what went on last weekend at Redhill.
Photos thanks to Gareth Dalley
We’ve got no delusions of being event organisers… but every now and again we get it in our heads that we want to put on a little gettogether. Because we’re not already busy enough, right?
The inspiration came whilst on the phone to Vee Tyre. We were ranting about how serious everyone takes downhill racing these days and how we need more events that are about having fun and earning scuffed knees and hangovers. More about the beers and less about stop watches and sponsorship deals.
And so, we decided to put on a dual slalom race in the day, a party by night, keep the entry price low and the hassle at a minimum. We asked Redhill to provide the venue and were met with a resounding “fuck yes”, VeeTyre and Sprung Suspension came onboard as co-organisers and that was that, it was happening.
Our first lesson in event organisation was that you need all sorts of stuff to put on a race and a party. Marquees apparently are expensive to hire, slalom poles cost £15 each and tracks do actually take a bit of time to dig. Thankfully, the Malverns crew stepped up and loaned us their poles, the council were supportive with the old events license hurdle and the marquee, well, Team Manager Big Dave just chucked that one on the credit card and bought one on eBay. If anyone’s getting married we now offer marquee hire services as part of Wideopen’s portfolio!
Much to our surprise the tickets sold like hot-cakes… The big day appeared and we had over 100 riders on the start sheet, the sun was shining and our new marquee had even turned up on time.
Sure, it didn’t all go perfectly to plan. We did have a slight challenge of the track. Bad weather had meant our plan to dig a proper, two lane slalom track couldn’t happen. We reverted to Plan B, marked out a classic poles-down-the-field track and away we went.
Practice kicked off and plenty of grass stained bums, burped tyres and two deep, beautifully carved ruts signalled a good morning of bikes. Racing kicked off with an against-the-clock qualification run and we cut the pack down to 64 riders. The fastest 64 then went into knocks outs, getting a run in each lane with the fastest qualifier going through in the case of a draw.
The final came down to a battle between Jono Jones, Ben Jones and Ben Gillet – Ben G took the overall win, Ben J in second and Matt Jones’ brother Jono taking 3rd spot. Fastest female of the day went to Natasha Bradley who went on to kill it the following day at 4X also.
Big thanks to everyone that came along to the slalom and to everyone that stayed on for a few beers and a knees up in the evening… not least Sprung Suspension’s Jake and friends who provided the tunes to keep us up till late.
Will go again next year ..?
Yeah, we reckon so. Now we’ve done a first attempt we can allow some younger riders to compete, get male and female categories and get the track a little more dialled in. Watch this space.
Cheers to the following for making the Dual Slalom and EOS Party happen:
Sprung Suspension
Redhill
Vee Tyre UK
