Caersws Cup – Final Round

I trekked up to Caersws in the very early hours of Saturday. The course was apparently the same as the national the week before but I walked it to find out there was a fair few little changes in places that meant changing some lines. I also checked out a jump that I wanted to do that I thought that I lost out on at the national.

Practise was pretty relaxed for me. I practised the new bits and with it being a fairly short course anyway there wasn’t much to learn. The dust picked up through the day with it being a very hot sunny day. I liked the course again even with the changes and the dust made things a lot better for me.

I was fairly annoyed to find a few riders standing in the course at a tight and fast section. They had made the rider in front of me fall off and then I fell off trying to miss the guy that had fallen off before. Luckily I wasn’t hurt and just got an annoying graze on my knee that my pads rubbed on. I only did 6 runs in practise but got all my lines done in my first run apart from the jump over a stump on a fast corner. I plucked up the balls to do it in my last run though.

After a trip to Newtown listening to some gangster tunes with Ross and Max I hit the hay pretty early to get my necessary 10 hours sleep.

I did 3 runs in the morning to go that little bit faster. On my last run I missed a corner completely in the fast open section after the last road and where I would usually jump about 30 foot over some ruff ground I went straight into a load of cut down tree’s and just managed to get back on course. Dad managed to get a picture as he thought I was going to stack it. Ross was following me down and he nearly landed on me as I cut back on which was pretty surprising to see him in the corner of my eye.

My first run went well and I had a fast but relaxed run down. I made a few small mistakes but in what kind of race run don’t you. I came down with a 2min 40.01 seconds I was leading by 6 seconds until Ross came down and took me back to school with a 2min 37.9 seconds. The misty rain began to start and i thought for a second that I was going to have to put spikes on but it stopped and stayed pretty light when it returned.

Before my second run I was determined to go that bit faster and push harder. I pushed it but stayed in control. I was pretty happy with my run and I didn’t really make any major mistakes. I came down with a 37 seconds which just beat the time that Ross did but then he came down again and beat me with a better 37 seconds. It was pretty cool with it being so tight and then a fair gap between us and the others. Matt Simonds had a 39 seconds in his first run and he went up with the thought of juniors winning the fastest time of the day so he was going to pull something out, and that he did; he came down and took another 3 seconds off of our times.

I was 4th overall which I was happy with and I was also happy to see myself improve with my time being closer to seasoned world cup racers like Matt.

Here are a few pics of the weekend;










Here is a vid of me at the bottom


I am on my way home now writing this in the van. I just can’t wait to get back and ride these new dirt jumps me and Oli Burton have made. We only rode the first massive hip before we went to the race but we finished another 3 before we came and they are looked awesome so expect to see another blog up soon about them!

Thanks to Last, DMR, Rezurgence, Lifestyle Ford, 2026 distribution, Funn, Bell, Thor, KMC, Nike 6.0, Mojo suspension, and Shimano.