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Fat Face National Championships
Moelfre Hall
James - 18th July 2006
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Heres one for the books - a UK national in 2006, without rain or mud!
Moelfre is a relatively new course on the racing books, having only been about for around 2 years now, however it makes for one of the most trying and enjoyable races for spectators and racers alike.
For the second year running Fat Face continued their sponsorship of the UK National Championships, Saturday night saw the floodlit 4x action and a huge fireworks display as well.
Sunday morning kicked off with the XC racing, the course ran around the finish arena, straight up a seriously steep fireroad (as in, struggling to walk up it, never mind ride) then down the last section of the 2005-04 downhill course, some comedy crashes here as people locked their front wheels up and landed in the gorse.. some sore starts come Monday morning for sure.
Now what we'd been waiting for, the downhill race. The top 20 juniors and top 50 seniors would be racing today, from qualifying. All the other categories had been decided on the Saturday, making Sunday purely for the fast boys.
The course began right at the top of the hill, went straight down the left hand side of the field, over some big rock drops and fast loose turns, you could tell the Athertons had a part in this, big kickers were the fast line but chicken runs were still available for those not willing.
As soon as you were out of the field the course dropped rapidly down the side of a valley, steep tight corners were the order here, and they caught plenty of people out as tyres struggled to grip through inches of dust on the surface. As soon as you navigated through the corners it was a flat out sprint to the hip jump which would bring you out onto the fireroad, straight across and onto a rocky off camber section, get it wrong here and you'd drop straight off the hill into the gorse. Over the wall and onto a super fast off camber grassy section, what Moelfre is well known for. Hit the kicker into the slab drop, cross the fireroad again and hit another kicker into the finish straight, no grip here whatsoever.. just gotta hope your rubber will stick, through the compression at the stream and over the line in around 2:30 minutes. The course pretty plain, but what else would you expect from a hillside like Moelfre, no roots here. Also for some reason, wooden stakes were used for marking posts in some places.. ever so slightly dangerous at racing speed?! The NPS is up for tenders at the end of the year, so if you're up for it...
The racing ran smoothly apart from the start, where the racers were all held up at the start as the organisers tried to fix a faulty timing wire somewhere on the the hillside.
In the mens Marc Beaumont took the win, with MBUK team mate Neil Donoghue in second and Mojo's Dan Stanbridge in 3rd. In the womens Tracey Moseley stormed to first, Rachel Atherton 2nd and Helen Gaskell in 3rd.
Steve Peat was looking like he'd take the win until the dying seconds of his run, hit the compression at the water crossing and went flying as his back wheel disintegrated and still managed to run across the line to 6th.
However, Beaumont didnt actually qualify for the final (crashed in seeding run) so how we have a National Champ who didnt qualify no-ones really sure.
Thats the nationals over for another year, thanks to all the organisers, British Cycling, Dave Morgan (and team), the marshals, Fat Face, Extreme Medics for bringing their land rover out for eye candy, uplift drivers and the farmer for letting hundreds of bikers descend on his land for another year. See you next time.
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