A record entry of 143 riders raced their socks off at Uk Bike Park on Sunday.

Stay tuned for the DirtTV video coming soon.

The weather had played havoc in the lead upto the race but with a whole load of new riders and three guys even making the trip all the way from Holland to race the was most definitely on.

Talk on Bookface was of deep mud on the track and when the Dirt-Wars competition was cancelled rumours spread of the race being cancelled but this is mountain biking and a bit of mud isn’t going to stop the fun!

It came as a bit of a shock to lot of 4x racers having to change their normal slick tyres to spiky mud tyres to race.

This track had the longest start straight of any 4x track and nearly 300meters long, changes over the winter had thrown in two new corners half way down to make racing closer, other changes included new corners lower the track and new jumps and rollers these were soft from all the rain so made racing slow.

The racing started with 4 motos & with 10 categories racing that adds upto over 150 motos to get thought before we got to the ¼ finals.
Racing ran like clockwork and come finals time the track drying into a gloop that made racing slow for younger riders.

Will Longden took the pro win after Scott Beaumont took a slam at the bottom of the start hill, Will Evans and Duncan Ferries taking the other two spots.

Nicola Anderson took the ladies win in her first 4x race from Kerry Wrigglesworth and Terry Anne Busbridge

The Dutch guys who had come over here to race because its to wet in Holland all three made the podiums & VAN STEENBERGEN took home a win in the Juveniles .

Full results here.

The next round is at Harthill in Cheshire on Saturday 29th May with the Euro Fourcross Series Rd4 on Sunday 30th May. The track designed by Phil Saxena on the side of a big hill will make for super fast exciting racing.

Photographer Dopey Dan also braved the weather and sent us this report.

A Wet and Wild Weekend in the South!

Something that hasnt happened for a long time was about to begin, on a cold and raining saturday morning. With a massive selection of useful and useless items, i loaded up the car, and me and the Duck headed south, a long way south,after four and a half hours of deciding what the romans invented (including eating, sleeping, bridges and the sea), filming road signs and crazy people, and discussing the problems of the world (we decided it was the fact its full of people who are generally shit) we arrived at UK Bike Park.
This place was wet! And i dont mean ‘lets put some dual ply high rollers on’ wet, i mean ‘spikes and flats’ wet, this was going to be a crazy race!
On the whole, saturday practice was not an enjoyable affair, with a fresh track and a foot deep mud bath in the second turn, many people decided that having a few drinks and kicking back on site or in a nice B&B down the road was the better way to prepare for a race.

With sideways rain all the way through saturday night, a few questions were being asked about the chance of racing, but at 2am on sunday morning, the heavens closed, and we had no rain, and amazingly sunshine it was still really windy though!

Practice started with no problems, the gate ran smoothly and everyone was generally getting more and more optimistic about the prospect of racing, the motos went off without a hitch, well a few commentary failures due to wet paper and the generator, but the gate was running smoothly, there were a lot of motos this weekend, and this only made the track faster.

Finals came round and the obvious choice for the win, Scott Beaumont, provided the biggest suprise of the weekend, well the year, and crashed on the first straight after being forced out wide off the start ramp. He got sketchy and went down gaining an uncomfortable wrist injury in the process. A massive shock as Scott was hauling all weekend! This left Will Longdon to take the win, holding his lead from the start. Will Evans tucked in 2nd and Duncan Ferris took 3rd.

This was a race that was full of suprises, and the general opinion was that the race could have been alot better if the weather was better, the changes to the track created a harder, more challenging track, yet the weather stopped these changes showing their true potential!

I need to say a massive thanks to Andy Dunwoody who drove me home and charged my camera equiptment and Christian Hatcher (2nd Place Masters) who let me pitch my tent in the Rockstar Ez-up.

Words And Photos Dopey Dan