Southern Round 1 - Bordon, Hampshire

The first race of the 2009 Southern series was held under blue skies and bright sunshine, defying the weather forecast which all week had predicted rain. Bordon is a very popular course with riders, whilst not hilly it more than makes up for it with tight, fast and flowing singletrack with berms, doubles, drops and jumps, its great fun and 550 riders turned up to enjoy it!

The Monkeys were represented by their two promising Junior riders, Nat who came into the race on the back of a fantastic win the previous week in the first Midland XC race and Ben who was on the recovery road following illness and with a decent show at the Midland series a week earlier was looking to continue his progress after the early season setback.

The start was fast and furious with Ben reaching the corner just ahead of the winner of the first National Series race of the year, Steve James, Luke Gray and Nat Jarvis. Steve and Ben managed to get away from Luke and Nat and built a 30 second lead before having problems with backmarkers from the Open race. Luke made an effort to get across the gap and then Steve and Luke attacked and used the back markers to their advantage to build a gap over Ben in third and Nat in fourth. At the end of the first lap Steve just headed Luke. He took full advantage of a mistake from Steve and jumped into the lead, meanwhile Steve had several bad moments when passing people and had to settle for 2nd place behind a charging Luke. Ben continued his recovery finishing a strong 3rd and lapping in consistent times. Nat had a problem at the feed station costing him time and with it a couple of places.

So a great start to the Southern XC and a mixed race for the Monkeys with a strong ride on the road to recovery for Ben and a minor setback for Nat. Afterwards Nat was philosophical about his performance and was positive about his next race at the National series where both riders aim to be gunning for high placings.