The season is nearly upon us. Well actually it’s about eight weeks away, but still things are starting to happen. Here’s Adam Nightingale’s report from the first round at the Royal Leamington Spa 4X series.
So the 2010 RLS 4X season sponsored by TheBikeYard is finally upon us and we couldn’t have woken up to worse weather conditions, a blanket a snow and no sign of it clearing up got us rather worried people weren’t going to show, however with a lot of help from the RLS4X locals and friends (and a big shout out to them as without them the race wouldn’t of happened) we managed to clear the track of all the snow and then the racers started arriving. It was nice to see everyone again after the Xmas and New Year break, the Red Mist Racing boys, lots of RLS locals and even a new famous face! None other than UCI World Cup 4X Rider Tom Dowie turned up for our first race of the year!
With the track cleared of the white stuff, and practice over, we got the moto’s under way, where we had some very entertaining and intense racing, from all the categories involved. Highlights included lots of close racing and tight lines, plenty of drifts from some! Riders of all ages providing some very action packed moto’s from RLS 4X’s latest club member Cai Mahon getting very stuck in the Juvenile category on his debut to NPS 4X’s very own Chris ‘Superman’ Roberts getting smoked by a girl in moto 1 (not the best start hey Chris! only messing!).
With all the excitement from the moto’s now over we introduced our first new challenge of the year (last year being the 10mile Road Bike Time Trial). The Mini bike Time Trial, the rules are simple, get the mini bike to the bottom in the fastest time, the person with the winning time overall gets £100 at the final round of the RLS 4X series (Date: TBC), sounds easy right? The bike has 16″ wheels and an American style braking system (pedalling backwards) therefore no levers on those bars so its death grip all the way! We had 3 entries of varying heights in the first round, with Kyle Greenway, Guy Ratcliffe and Alistair Keen keeping everyone entertained during the lunch period, Alistair Keen is currently leading the way with a time of 48.6seconds, Kyle 51.1 seconds and Guy with a time of 101.3 seconds
After the mini rest break we returned to the 4X finals, with prizes to be had the pressure was on to get on the podium, riders touching elbows in the corners and over the jumps were just some of the highlights of the exciting finals action with all the categories provided tightly contested runs. The results finished as follows…
1st 2nd 3rd
Juvenile: Cai Mahon Warwick Cox Kyle Greenway
Youth: James Yates Blake Massey Josh Bremridge
Senior: Michael Gray Eddie Chaffe Mark Pratley
Master: Andy Robson Niall Ingram Tim Webb
Elite: Tom Dowie Dan Haines Tom Knight
Lots of big thanks to be mentioned…. TheBikeYard for organising the race, prizes etc, Chris Roberts for the Air Ram, Stu and May from Monster Energy, Big Jon Cheetham the man behind the scenes that keeps the racing going, Lizards Cafe for providing much needed hot food, Steve from English Bay Photography for the rad photos, Guy Ratcliffe for keeping people entertained on the megaphone, Nathan Parsons, Jonny Cheetham, Jethro Stride, Alec Henderson, Chris Thurburn and anyone else that helped get the track rideable before everyone showed up, Sassi Woo and Anne Cheetham for keeping everything else organised behind the scenes and keeping the RLS 4X staff going. Tina Ingram for the lovely cakes and photo’s.
Click English Bay Photography to take a look at Steve Kavanagh’s photos from the weekend.
We hope everyone had fun, and we look forward to seeing you all again at the next round (TBC), hopefully this time we will get some better weather for you all! Remember to keep checking the RLS 4X and thebikeyards websites for more information on future events etc. (our website team are currently away until Friday so updates will happen over the weekend).
