2010 Alpine Bikes, Round 1, Innerleithen

31st January 2010


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By Stephen Hardcastle (pics Ian MacLennan)

So after what seemed like an eternity since the last race of 2009, I loaded up the van and headed up the A1 to Innerleithen for the first round of the winter series. This series has been running in various forms for years now; this year the series is being run by Mike Marsden of Borderline events along with another series, uplifts, 2 race teams and seemingly everything else in the DH world.

Sion Jones looking sharp in his new kit, riding for Pearce Cycles in 2010

I’ve only been to Inners twice before - once for a winter DH race in about 2002 and again for the National Champs last year. Both times I’ve enjoyed the courses a lot and the uplift is good, it’s just a shame about the ride along the road to the uplift pick up point. We’ll just think of it as winter training at this time of year though.

I’d headed up on the Friday so had time to walk the course in the afternoon. I can’t describe it fully now (the reasons for this will become clear below) but it was pretty dry, taped nice and wide in sections and steeper than I remembered Inners being. The first section headed far left out of the start hut and had some awkward steps in, across the fireroad into some fast bits in the trees on to a smaller fireroad with a couple of bus stops and on to the middle fireroad. Off here a short off camber straight and then back into the trees for more before heading in to the final sections via some jumps out in the open and a line from the bombhole; take off to the right and off piste down to the road. It looked like it would be fast and really good fun to ride so I retired to the van to watch tv, looking forward to Saturday’s practice.

Andrew Weeding

I’m told it was -10°C Friday night and it certainly felt pretty cold when I got up on Saturday morning. The uplift was due to start around 8am from the car park, but this ended up moving down to the normal pick up point. I made the end of the first coach so was among the first few riders down the course. As it was first run I took it fairly steady and while it was a bit slippy here and there the course felt good, so it was straight back to the top to try and pick up the pace. A decent sprint out of the start hut this time, into the first left hander and immediately down on the ground. Felt a bit odd but I went back up and tried again a little bit slower... As soon as I got into the first steep section it became very clear there was no grip at all. There were people stood everywhere and it was impossible to slow down. The passing of riders over that first hour had polished up the surface of the roots and rocks to perfection. The rest of the course was better than this but not much, and as more people rode the course it got worse and worse.

Shortly after this a track inspection by the commissaries resulted in practice being stopped and a rider meeting scheduled for 1pm. This gave the organisers time to clear the hill and assess the situation. After the meeting the uplift reopened and most of the people went off and rode some of the many other courses at Inners. Spreading the use across all the courses kept the polishing of the ice to a minimum and they were mostly ice-free and fun to ride. This filled the rest of the day with the race still planned to run on Sunday.

A positively balmy -8°C overnight on Saturday night and again up early and off to the uplift to start practice. The course start had been moved from the very top to one of the fireroads (top or middle to be decided during the morning) and it was nice not to have the push at the top of the uplift for once.

Kem Avis

Another steady run down the course revealed that if anything it was worse than my last run on Saturday morning. I got down without crashing once but it was luck, people were crashing everywhere and the course was very unpredictable. Some sections were fine, picking up speed well then you’d hit another corner and there was no grip. Practice continued for an hour or two with people either loving the course and the complete comedy of trying to ride it or reckoning it was a bit dangerous and being fairly over it.

Another meeting between the organiser and commissaries and to nobody’s great surprise the race was cancelled due to the conditions of the course. Nobody wants to travel 200+ miles to a race for a weekend and not get to ride against the clock but I think in the circumstances the right decision was made. In place of the race the uplift kept running all day and people headed off to ride all the tracks again. I tried various tracks most of which were running well and apart from Jack Reading trying to chop his head off with a wire fence there were no real stories to tell from the rest of the day.

That’s pretty much the story of the race that wasn’t. We did at least get a cheap uplift weekend out of it (£55 vs £70 for a normal Inners weekend) and it’s always good to get all the usual suspects from the race scene back together again. Borderline events did a pretty good job in the circumstances especially as this was their first event at this venue. Hopefully the weather will be kinder to us for the next race in 3 weeks time and we’ll get to see how people are doing against the clock after the winter training.

Sean Radcliffe will be disappointed to have his first race in Expert cancelled