Portuguese National - Porto de Mos

I went to Portugal for this UCI category 2 race in search of the extra 9 points I need to compete in the world cups again next year. I new it wasn’t going to be easy but I was confidant.

After a gruesome 35 hour travel by cruise ship and van I got to the venue. The van journey from Santandeer was constantly through mountains that looked down at the road at its insignificance to them. However the race track was on a hill that had to be a ¼ of the height.

The first minuite of the track was very simple and had 3 drops and was very flat. the next 30 seconds had some nice flat corners and another drop and was again very pedally. The last minuite had many corners with a bit more involved with rocks. It was as simple as it reads, but as I always say, if you’re a racer, it’s the clock your against and the track is no different for the other racers.

Saturday’s practise proved to a lot of people that despite the amount of pedalling involved it was great fun and you had to have both high levels of fitness and skill to do well. I managed about 10 runs of which I mainly pushed myself on the lower section of the course rather than tiring myself pedalling the top section at full speed.

Sunday’s practise I got 2 runs in and they were practise race runs. It rained over night but it was slowly drying and they went well.

My first race run was a strong run. I over cooked a couple of corners which I wasn’t pleased with as I lost speed scrubbing past the bushes on the side of the course. Apart from this I pedalled hard and did what I could.

I stayed in the hot seat for some time as rider after rider came down. Many of the elite riders were asking me what time I did and saying well done. It got to the end of junior and I was expecting the prototype Mondraker junior rider to set a challenging time. However it was some racer on a specialised that came down and set a slightly faster time and the other juniors were a little off the time.

So I was second in junior and after everyone had raced I was 3rd overall. I had worked out before the race that I had to come 5th or better to get the points I needed.

Second race runs were in the hard rain and there was no way it was going to be possible to go faster, not even Sam Hill would have done it. The course was very greasy and rocky based and vision was poor. It was the most fun I had had in a run there though. Every corner was difficult and so drifty! I would have loved for 1st runs to be this way too. No one went faster in these runs so I kept my 3rd overall and that meant that I had another 15 UCI points.

When I got back home I was devastated to find out that instead of posting up the overall times, they had only put up the elite times. And for some reason this would mean that I would not get any points.

It is still frying my brain why a junior racer shouldn’t get the points if he is to beat all but one of the elite racers. If a younger rider is to beat what’s know as the “elite” of the racers then it makes no sense to me why he should not be awarded the points, let alone another trophy to state it.

It’s a rest from racing for a while now but certainly not a rest from training, I have it all to do again, “when I am old enough,” so bring on the new year because I’m coming back stronger.

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