Mud, Sweat & Gears 3 - Tunstall Woods

Ben takes his first Elite win!

In his first season as an Elite rider Ben was hoping to get on the podium at an Elite race. It was beyond his expectations that he would take the top step of the podium in his first season as an Elite rider.

It had been 3 weeks since the disappointing performance at the Welsh Championships, since then the team had been to the Dalby and Offenburg World Cups supporting team riders Rourke Croeser and Alex Baker. Ben was keen to get some racing in before the team move on to the next round of the British XC series at Wasing Park next week. So it was on a windy, warm and sunny day that we rolled into Tunstall Woods to take on the 3rd round of the Eastern Regional Mud Sweat and Gears race series. With a departure from the normal shorter race distances introduced this year, the fast, sandy and very dry course was a 4 mile loop and the riders would tackle eight laps with an expected race time of just over 2 hours.

From the gun a lead group formed with Ben using Jason Bouttell, Stephen James and Paul Robertson for pace and protection from the wind. For three laps the group of 4 circulated together, each rider attacked the others repeatedly but each time the escapee would hit traffic in the single track and the chasing group would get back to his wheel. It was cat and mouse and it only broke up when at the end of lap three Stephen James had to climb off in the feed zone and re-inflate a tyre losing him a minute or so. As he was chasing hard to get back on terms the lead group of three were pulling out a gap. First to buckle under the high consistent lap times was Paul Robertson who lost the wheels of the leading pair on the climb and never managed to get back on. On lap 6 Ben attacked on the hill and Jason Bouttell couldn’t go with him, seeing that he couldn’t respond Ben put in one of his fastest laps of the race and opened a gap of 15 seconds as they started the 7th lap, Ben pushed on and despite stomach cramps put in two more fast consistent laps to take his first Elite win with a comfortable margin ahead of a late charging Stephen James who managed to just pip Paul Robertson for second place on the line.

Ben said after the race “That was really tough, I wanted to push myself today and the longer race time gave me a great chance to put in some consistent laps. It was a bumpy course so the Cannondale Scalpel was the perfect bike to just take out the harshness that caused Paul to have back problems, it was so good and just let me carry speed through sections that would slow down a hardtail. When Stephen was chasing hard to get back on I knew I had to kick and give myself a cushion before the last lap and so when I Saw Paul and Jason drop off me as went up the climb on lap 6 I decided to just go for it and opened up a gap which I managed to hold with a strong last lap. I am really pleased to have taken the win, I changed a few things with my build up after Wales and my legs felt great today.”

So it was a great result for the young Orange Monkey-Cannondale rider and a good confidence boost ahead of the British National XC Series next week when the team will all be trying to improve on their good rides at Dalby in the last round.