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BUSA DH Championships 2006
Eastridge - BUSA
James - 29th March 2006
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The BUSA Student Champs happens once a year, and usually involves drinking, fire, destruction and the odd bit of riding your bike.
THe venue for this year was Eastridge, the somewhat controversial choice since they couldnt get Moelfre ready in time. Given that my past experience of Eastridge was pretty much flat, I wasnt holding out much hope for the track, but somehow the course designers managed to build a hill! We had steep sections, and the majority of the track pointed downhill, all good then.
The weather during the week before the event was rain, snow then rain again, so the course was completely sodden. It started up high at the top, the beginning was pretty flat and pedally, nothing too special, but plenty of gloopy mud saw most people struggling through this section.
Then comes the infamous road gap, probably about 7 feet down by 12 out, only a few attempted this and landed it cleanly, given the weather it probably wasnt the best option but would be very nice come the summer!
Straight into a super rocky chute, just breezeblock size rocks EVERYWHERE, no particular line through them, because they kept rolling around! Then a slight detour along the contour of the hill, and some steep stuff! I swear they must have sent us to a different hill, this was certainly not the Eastridge I remember.
All the corners were pretty slimy, but made for some funny viewing as people slid around and inevitably crashed.
In the summer this would be a nice track, probably very quick but plenty of variety.
Watching around 50 uni's worth of drunk downhillers trying to navigate a muddy, slippy course is pretty comical at the least, plenty of dodgy lines andthe majority spend half the time upside down anyway.
Victory was taken by Phil Shucksmith of Cardiff, 2nd place went to Mike Gray of Bristol and Will Evans from Swansea took third. Cardiff also took the overall victory in the teams, Manchester second and Swansea third, looks like the Welsh boyo's showing the way ahead!
Big thanks to Paddy, Steve Parr, Si Paton, extreme medics and anyone who made what was a pretty dismal start into a great race!
Full results can be found here, yo can also find my first badly put together video here on FTMB, let me know what you think in the forum till next year!
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