Pearce Cycles 2013 – Round 1 Bringewood
Race ; Pearce rd 1, Bringewood, 27/28 April 2013.
Weather ; Dry, gusty winds, cool, too cold, too warm in the sun!
The eagerly anticipated Pearce Cycles downhill series finally kicked off at Bringewood this weekend, having been rescheduled due to the wonderful spring weather that had much of the UK under snow. The rescheduling meant that some people couldn’t make the race, but frankly not being able to race your bike when you want to is an insignificant problem when faced with some of the problems that sheep farmers have faced this Lambing season, so spare a thought eh? And don’t forget those of us who like lamb chops.
The 303 boys and girls who could make it were greeted by a mostly dry track, with just a few greasy corners up top which would soon dry out and get grippy. The line of the track didn’t take a steep gradient, nor did it present loads of line choice difficulties, but definitely still required precision and commitment to extract the speed out of it, with bar ends and elbows getting very close to trees in many places. A decent amount of jumps kept the airtime boys happy (yes everybody knows it’s faster wheels on the ground, but so what?), although this could be a double-edged sword judging by the amount of awful ‘style’ attempts witnessed by poor unsuspecting members of the public. Moving swiftly on, the gradient, the corner-to-corner nature of the track and the proximity of trees (except of course on the treeless section) meant a fairly consistent speed was found, so with dry conditions prevailing (the sun even made an appearance) and few lines where big chunks of time could be chanced, the racing was going to be tight.
The legendary Pearce Cycles uplift kept its usual, er, legendary status intact, many riders getting well into double figures with their practice runs. Rumour even had it that the spirit of Colin McRae had entered one of the uplift drivers, judging by his ‘keep it lit’ style! Only one significant red flag delay occurred, the poor unfortunate eventually being carried away, and good luck to you fella, we all hope you’re ok. Even if we did get cold waiting for you to get swept up.
The brief rain and hail session on Saturday evening didn’t bother the track, so Sunday morning was pretty much a case of continuing where you left off the night before. Some people got 4 practice runs in Sunday morning so there were no excuses for not being up to speed (apart from being a lazy bugger and sleeping in too long). Precision, commitment and flow were going to be the attributes that came to the fore here, pure handling skills and fitness less so. But who would present them?
13 ladies turned out to race, which is better than the average number for Nationals, good on you girls. If that sounds patronising, it’s not meant to; this writer is all for members of his opposite sex racing and doing dumb stuff on bikes. But as this is a race report we’ll pull our toe out of the waters of politics and sexism in downhill bicycling, and instead bring the news that Jess Stone took the Elite win from Traharn Chidley, whilst in Seniors Annie Mathews narrowly edged Suzanne Lacey into second with Rebecca Baraona in third. The Junior and Masters fields were decimated by Charlotte Hughes and Lucy Newman respectively, and the Veteran class was bossed by Janine Wolstenholme with Nicky Belton in second place.
Over on the sausage side of things, Juvenile Men’s podium was swamped by double-T’s, with Nat Nott up top over Joe Parfitt in second and Seth Barrett on the third step. Youths had Nathan Foster narrowly pushed to third by Charlie Hatton, but Aston Hill’s Alistair Warrell was a couple seconds clear in first place. Jumping to the old boys, the Veterans class was held by Adrian Bradley for 1868 Racing/Antur Stiniog, followed closely by John Cobb and Richard Brazier, and in Masters big Dave List (Pete Yates Cycles) was back at the top, but only a second covered him, Craig Taylor in second and Neil White in third. Going to be some very tight racing in the Master’s cat this year. Back to the youngsters, Junior Men just seem to get faster and faster, and some of these boys will be headed straight to Expert or beyond I reckon. Shaun Richards nabbed third, second place man Will Weston a second clear of him, but newly signed GT Factory rider Taylor Vernon backed up the faith shown in him with a 4 second gap over the field, a 2’06 putting him on the top spot, incidentally faster than a good portion of the Elites, and 5th fastest overall on the day. One to watch there for sure. As usual Seniors was the biggest category, and whilst Jack Chapman 2 was only third by something in the region of a hundredth of a second from Jake Ward in second place, Darren Evans (Aston Hill again) gapped the field by nearly 5 seconds, with a time which would’ve got him the win in Experts. Some fast boys about! In Expert Category, team Aston Hill continued their bid for most-mentioned Sponsor with Glenroy Martin taking the win, with James Hughes and Reece Langhorn filling the next two podium steps, but again only 1 second separated these three, Expert category; always very competitive.
Finally, Elites! GT Factory Team Racing had turned up in force this weekend, aboard bikes which nobody knows about and which aren’t to be photographed and are therefore secret prototypes, as you all well know. Gee Atherton and Marc Beaumont both arrived hungry for the win, although with a field containing such names as Brayton, Molloy, Sheridan, Brewin and Atlee (only joking Tom) nothing was being taken for granted. However, Gee and Marc had both sent a chainless run down to open the track on Sunday morning and rumours abounded of sub 2.06 times, so some serious speed was going to be required to get past these two well known heavy hitters. In the end Adam Brayton (Hope Technology) came closest, only edged out of second place by a couple of tenths from Marc Beaumont (GT Factory), with the formidable form of Gee Atherton on the top step by nearly 3 quarters of a second with a 2’01”44 and unsurprisingly fastest time of the day. Watching the top boys come down the hill is a bit of an eye opener if you’ve never had the chance, and well worth a look, precision and consistency of speed really stand out above the flailing and spraying of many of us. Proper!
And so another successful Pearce Cycles event drew to a close, with round 2 at Bala to follow hot on its heels this coming weekend. As opposed to last year’s race at Rhyd-y-Felin, the weather forecast is decent, but whatever happens with that, the racing at round one has demonstrated that the on track action should be pretty hot in itself! It only remains for this writer to thank the Pearce Cycles mob for another great race, and to apologise to my sponsors Ride.io and RoostDH for lying down in the sun on the grass, before crossing the finish line. Oops!
For full results visit Roots and Rain
Words – Anthony Gaskin
Images – Mark Evans (www.photo-bike.com)
