You can’t beat a bit of grassroots racing and 4X is perfect for that. Rock up on your trusty hardtail, enjoy unlimited practice runs and then battle elbow-to-elbow on track.
The British 4X Series is one of the few events where you can do just that and race alongside pros at a national level.
Last weekend saw the British 4X series finals from Harthill, Cheshire and Bike Park Wales’ Will Soffe has fired over this report:
Words by Will Soffe
Photos by Andy Cole
This weekend saw the sixth and final round of the UK 4X series at Harthill in deepest, darkest Cheshire.
The venue is a small bike and mountain board park run by Hale’s Bikes and Boards (a local shop) and boasts a surprisingly massive number of facilities! There’s a coffee shop, three pump tracks, two skills area, a foam pit, vert ramp, dirt jump zone and not one, but TWO 4X tracks. It was all I could do to focus on racing and not get distracted by all the cool things to play on!
The track was steeper than the average 4X track which was good news for people who don’t like pedalling or run flat pedals (or both in my case!). If you think 4X is all about racing mountain bikes round a flat BMX track you should definitely come race Harthill – it’s fast, full of really fun jumps and built for tight racing. Notable features were the second turn which had four possible line choices built in – one for each racer. There was also a really cool rhythm section with pro and amateur lines side-by-side. Pros were treated to two big doubles, the rest had two table tops.
