4/8/08

English Championships......

The English Champs was held at Hopton Castle,  a mostly new track made for a good race. The track was very wet saturday morning, some chose spikes and some chose to run dries in the hope it would dry up once some lines came out. Come race day dries were the tyre of choice with the open sections becoming a bit dusty and the mud turned into berms and ruts.

Tom had a good weekend being fastest on both race runs. He took the win by 1.8 secs over Robert Smith in 2nd and brother Dave Smith rounded off the podium in 3rd.

Top 3

1st  DEACON Tom Ancillotti UK      2:35.032     2:32.068     2:32.068

2nd SMITH Robert Santa Cruz/Reverse Components     2:36.235      2:33.879     2:33.879    +1.811

3rd SMITH Dave Santa Cruz/Reverse Components     2:38.336      2:37.701      2:37.701     +5.633

Next weekend sees the 4th round of the NPS at Moelfre.

20/7/08

Last weekend saw the biggest race on the domestic calender, the Britsh National Championships. Held near Bala on probably the best track in the UK and organised by Pearce Cycles, everyone was in for a top weekend. Gee won seeding followed by Steve Peat and Marc Beaumont in 3rd. Tom came in with 6th so pretty happy.

Race day saw better weather and the track dried out alot, spikes were changed for high rollers and the track got faster and mega rough. So onto the finals, Matt Simmonds was in the hot seat when Tom set off. Tom was on a great run breaking the split just 1 hundreth of a second behind Matt but Tom crossed the finish line a tight 3 tenths of second down. 

Now onto the top 5, each of them setting a new fastest time by small margins until Steve Peat came down in to a massive 4.5second lead. Then to everyones shock last man down, Gee Atherton managed to put 2 seconds into Peat at the split but disaster struck when Gee came out of the woods and washed out on one of the last grassy turns in the finish field.

The top ten ended like this:

1st  PEAT Steve Santa Cruz Syndicate      1:43.511        2:50.677

2nd BEAUMONT Marc Team Bike Radar    1:47.557    2:55.225    +4.548

3rd DONOGHUE Neil Team Bike Radar 1:48.102      2:56.771    +6.094

4th CUNNINGHAM Ruaridh Chain Reaction Cycles/Intense 1:49.641     2:57.830    +7.153

5th SIMMONDS Matt Chain Reaction Cycles/Intense 1:49.253       2:58.171    +7.494

6th DEACON Tom Ancillotti UK 1:49.260      2:58.482    +7.805

7th SMITH Robert Santa Cruz/Reverse Components 1:50.716     2:59.717     +9.040

8th BARNES Joe MTBcut.tv/Orange 1:51.967     2:59.791     +9.114

9th JONES Ralph Dirt Magazine 1:51.329     3:00.046     +9.369

10th CRITCHLOW Dan Chain Reaction Cycles/Intense 1:51.472      3:00.659     +9.982

24/5/08

It was the 3rd round of the Pearce race series at Bringewood at the weekend. Rain in the week made conditions pretty slick but a dry race day made the track better and better. Tom had a good weekend winning elite and taking the fastest time of the day with a time of 2 mins 29.22 secs. Thanks to Phil at gravity-slaves for the picture. Keep a check on his website for race reports and galleries. 

20/5/08

We invited the guys from One Planet Adventure to come and stay with us for a few days. They certainly seemed to enjoy them selves. Check out Jim's mini-report. Heres a couple of pics from their stay.

18/4/08:

Tom is back in England for the race season. We are happy to say he has just signed for Ancillotti bikes. Tom has just picked up his new race bike and is looking forward to the season ahead!! You can check out Ancillotti's range of bikes here.

31/3/08:

Our new track is now complete. Rob has been test riding this weekend. Its starts with a fast single track with s-bends and jumps then drops into very steap off-camber turns and ledges. The last section has fast flowing turns and a wall ride berm which then shoots into a dry river bed to the finish and pick up point.  

Have a look at our other new pictures of the track in our gallery.

6/3/08:

New dhspain.com private track is almost complete. We have been working on the track for some time, it's now in it's final stages before being ridden. Here are a few sneaky pictures of it so far.

2/3/08:

First race of the year. Tom takes 1st place at the Open Algarve Downhill Cup in Portugal.  It was a challenging course with steep rock sections, harsh compressions and loose turns. A good start to the year.

Picture courtesy of: www.freeride-algarve.com