Race Report: Simply Downhill at Nanty G.

I know Swin has just put a report up but as I had already written this, I figure we can have two…!

So this weekend was the first race held at new downhill venue Nant Gwrtheyrn. Nant G, as I will now call it due to epic Welsh spelling complexity, is situated on the northern side of the Llyn peninsula in an old disused mining village that has been converted to the Welsh language and heritage centre, and for last weekend a downhill race venue.

Let me tell you, this was a big change from the usual wet Welsh field with no amenities for what seems like 100miles. With the heritage centre comes toilets, b&b’s, a cafe and most importantly a well stocked bar. Did I mention that the camping was but a few hundred metres  from a beach? Ohh  yes.

The race format was a little different than we are used to as well with racing happening on both Saturday and Sunday. The tarmac up-lift road was very direct and running right from the finish to the start played a big part in the success of the strange format. I opted to just race on Sat, thus saving me a bit of cash and freeing me up for some other riding nearby, but a lot of people, Swinie included, decided to stay and run both races. I was a little sceptical regarding getting enough practice in for the race runs starting at 1.30ish, but actually slotted 5 or 6 runs in no problem. No doubt due to the efficient uplift.

So that’s the event, onto the reporting…

Our weekend started by leaving The Bike Tree at about 7pm on Friday night, prepared for a longer than usual drive over to the Welsh coast. In true Swindon style there was no printed off google map directions to ease the dark drive. Just hope, smelly dog’s and the McCramps from a McDonald’s run somewhere south of Manchester.Never mind, I just started blindly directing past Chester, Mold, Ruthin and a deserted Bala village. Cracking a left at Dolgellau saw the van bearing down on our Aberystwyth destination.

About 3 miles outside of Aberystwyth someone finally pipes up pointing out the race isn’t even at Aberystwyth. Bugger it, I’m going to sleep.

At about 1am the camping field, which is coincidently nowhere near bloody Aberystwyth, sees the biggest tent on earth get erected and we finally get horizontal for a few hours.

Race day.

The track was awesome. Up top you’re straight into the mix from the gate dropping down into a river with a bit of a potential snake-biting-powerbang rock compression, then rolling your freshly wetted tyres across a bit of off-camber into some turns. All the turns were holding really well enabling the riders to really push it up top, but as we snaked our way down lower it got a bit more rocky and Cypriot greasy. The rocks were proper slippy like wet limestone  and the interspersed roots were doing nothing for traction, just how we like it. It was steep too, although I didn’t notice this until I walked the track Sunday morning with Swin. There was a super fun section made up of 1000′s of baby head rocks all piled up in a wide loose drift-a-thon scree section that caused me no end of fun and then it was onto the sprint. And sweet child of mine, it was a sprint too. Barrelling down the fire road saw 2 drifty corners and an uphill trailcentre type pedal, then a table top-that chucked me OTB in practice- then bit more pedalling to the finish via 2  rock super-booters with no landings.

In my first race run I had quite a good one, not perfect as I stalled a few corners maybe loosing 5 seconds. Much to my surprise I arrived at the bottom with time to spare, I had just knocked Swinie into second! I spoke to an equally surprised James who had a run littered with crashes in the greasy conditions.

Pressure. I had never sat in 1st after the first race run so I din’t quite know what to do.

Went down to the tent and ate a bit. Will came down and informed Swinie and myself the times were up. I was 12 seconds ahead of Swinie who was sat 11seconds above 3rd place. OK. I am not sure if that added more pressure or took some off but we were defiantly confident of a podium.

Waiting for the second race run at the top saw us chatting to pinner Kurtis Knowles who punctured on the first run. Maybe there is some competition after all.

I had a good run though, a few small mistakes were inevitable on a steep rocky track like this, but nothing slowing me down too much saw me taking my first win, with Kurtis about 5 seconds back in second and Swinie just a hair off in 3rd.

Couldn’t believe it , I had just won a race. Awesome. Mega-smile on the top step and then time for a cider on the beach, ending an awesome weekend. Actually its still only Saturday…..

Also worth a mention is Katie Hallam, in her first race, cracking out a brilliant 2nd place and Swinie winning Sundays race. Represent Sheffield!

Full results are on the amazing site that is rootsandrain.co.uk but this is the general lay-out.

Rob Stokes

Elite

Expert

Senior

Position ↓	Bib	Name	Sponsor	Run 1	Run 2	Best run	Diff
1	50	Rob STOKES	The Bike Tree.co.uk	2:30.993	2:27.398	2:27.398	-
2	45	Kurtis KNOWLES	Ride-On / Slik Graphics	3:01.207	2:32.830	2:32.830	5.432s
3	27	James SWINDEN	The bike tree	2:42.315	2:34.097	2:34.097	6.699s

Junior