Emily Horridge

Well, what a contrast from the first Sunday of April to the last one: blazing sunshine and beautiful clear skies to howling wind and persistent rain. It’s almost as if nature got muddled up and put summer before spring. So, under dark precipitous skies we drove down to Penshurst in Kent for round 2 of the British 4x series. The weather was bad at home and it was just as bad upon arrival, so I joined some of the Naked Racing team and watched the weather going by from the relative comfort of the big tree house. No one was keen to get their bikes out and instead we popped down the pub as soon as tea-time was upon us for a evening of good food, cider and banter.

That night sleeping in the van I was alternatively congratulating myself for being a van owner who need not endure the constant noise of flapping canvas, and berating myself for deciding racing 4x in the mud and rain was a good idea. However, after a good night’s sleep and some manning up (including changing tyres and getting the lycra leggings out for some extra mud defence), I got up on the gate and took a gentle bimble down. At last the downhiller in me got to triumph with tyre choice: a cut-down 2.5″ dual ply spike handled gripping duties up front, and the weight disadvantage was balanced by keeping a nice light weight 4x tyre on the back. The track was alright as well, although the rain stopping just before racing started was a mixed blessing – we’d not be stood in the rain waiting for motos but at the same time the track would only get claggier and claggier, and the second two straights were not exactly very fast even when the mud was of a more liquid consistency. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the slog I knew we’d encounter along there come race time.

I did another 2 or 3 runs and decided that was enough. In the conditions it wasn’t so much about jumping things as getting down the track in an upright manner. Also, it just seemed like a very simple straightforward downhill track so although it was mega fun and I’d've liked to have ridden it quite a bit more, saving energy was the more important priority. Finally motos got under way. I won the first two pretty easily but the third one against Suzanne Lacey was pretty interesting. The compressor had broken (I think) for the gate, so it was a manual gate, which basically means the start marshal presses a pedal on the gate, and it falls with the aid of gravity, there are no beeps or anything, and it’s very slow. I was in lane 2 and Suzanne in 3, so we could both see the gate mechanism.. I saw it move and thought the gate was gonna go down so I lurched forward to go, but it hadn’t dropped yet and I just rode into it! This put my weight all in the wrong place so when it did finally drop I wasn’t in position to power out and Suzanne got out before me. I managed to pull level and get round the first turn and over the bridge in front of her but i could see her shadow in the sun, and knew she was close. She came up along side as we went over the next table top, then we were hitting the take off of the triple when a gust of wind came in. I heard a little squeal and thought the wind had got her.. I took off and suddenly she wasn’t there any more. I didn’t know what was going on so I gunned it all the way down the rest of the track, fully thinking I was going to die due to lung explosion. Luckily I didn’t, and won my final moto, but it was no easy task! Good battling though.

There were originally 9 girls racing, but 2 had been forced to drop out due to brake issues, so we were down to 7. That was still enough to do a semi-final but everyone agreed we’d rather just go straight to finals on points, so having won all my motos, I was in the A-final along with Joey Gough, Cara Murray and Suzanne. I was pretty nervous about this. Joey is super awesome on a bike, and I’m pretty sure we’ve never actually raced one another, so I had no idea how it was going to go. I maybe have better mountain bike skills but she has rapid gate skills and power to match. After what seemed like much too long a wait, we were finally in the gate. Joey in 1, me in 2, Cara and Suzanne in 3 and 4. Joey powered out and cut across me to the outside, which really took me by surprise – I’d expected her to go inside. Anyway I dived inside and blocked her to go into the lead.. but pedalling out of the berm along a flat claggy muddy bit I remember thinking how she’d probably power past me soon with her mega pedalling legs, and sure enough as we crossed the bridge she came past. She jumped the table and I kept it low, then the next triple I actually launched the whole damn thing as I was going so much faster than I’d been before. That was pretty rad. I tried diving inside on the next corner, but i just wasn’t close enough to block Joey again, and she got through in front of me with all the speed she’d carried around the outside. Next thing I could hear someone coming up behind me – that inside line really wasn’t the quickest! So I had to pedal as hard as I could through all the claggy mud and keep it going all the way to the line to finish 2nd. Such a good but hard race!

I’m now leading the women’s 4x series, but sadly I shan’t be able to carry that on because I shall be out of the UK when all of the next rounds are on. However, this is not the end of 4x racing in 2012 just yet.. we still have Fort William and Willingen 4x Pro-Tours to go! I’m still not 100% sure if I’ll do Fort William as I want to concentrate on the downhill there, but I’m gonna leave that decision til later.

Thanks to Chris Ratford and Alastair Keen for the photos.

Sometime in September we were all supposed to be going to Fort William for the final round of the British Downhill Series, but forecast high winds and other nastiness prompted a decision to cancel the race rather than make everyone drive up only to find they couldn’t ride. It would’ve been like Glencoe all over again. Up to this point we’d only had 3 rounds of the series actually take place, so a replacement had to be found fast. In the end Caersws was the venue of choice.

The chosen track was the one that has a tunnel under the uplift road. It had about three places with actual line choice, which me and Manon Carpenter stood and discussed for a while and then decided we’d just have to try them out the next day. Apart from that it was just a short, high speed fun track.

Photo: Laurence Crossman-Emms

Saturday practice got under way and the first few runs were really good fun, trying out different line alternatives to decide which was best and all that sort of thing. But then the last couple of runs I was just starting to find a bit boring. I knew where I was going, had everything nailed that I wanted to nail. So after 6 runs and at only about 3 o’clock I called it a day and went up the track to watch and have a look at a few things.

Sunday morning came around, I did a couple of practice runs and then it was time to get ready for my race run. I wanted to do well here, so I was mainly thinking about not braking between the high speed bus-stops. I got to the top with about 5 minutes to spare for seeding, and it wasn’t long before we were off. I had a pretty mint run at the top, managed not to brake between the bus-stops either, but despite this I remember thinking I was definitely going slower than the day before – massive headwind! After the tunnel there was one of the multi-line-choice corners, hit my lines all good but as I went into the corner I found myself going over the bars! I had no time to think about why and ran a couple of steps back up to my bike to jump back on and carry on down the hill. Either side of the crash my run was mint, so I was happy enough even though it put me into 4th with a 2.14, 7 seconds off Manon and Jess.

Next thing you know, the heavens have well and truly opened. It had rained on and off a fair bit over the weekend, but it was mostly nocturnal rain and the wind had dried the track out again pretty swiftly. But now it was heavy heavy rain pouring down on riders who were already up the hill on dry tyres, whilst those of us down in the pits were sending out a cry for spikes. This was going to be a pretty interesting affair, straight into a wet track with no warning. At the top someone warned me about a particular root which proved to be excellent knowledge as when I got to it I could see slide marks all over it and clearly it was taking everyone out. I stayed on the bike all the way down to the bottom section of woods before the mud-sliding shennanigans began! A new left-hander had been put in at the end of a high speed straight, so all that fresh dust was now just a load of slippery mud. At the exit of it there were a couple of roots which distracted me, thinking that they’d be slippery. I don’t think they were but the hesitation meant I fell off and rolled around on the floor for a bit. Someone shouted that everyone had fallen off there, so maybe all was not lost.. I jumped back on to negotiate the next crazy rooty corner, and somehow ended up sideways! Suddenly the roots I wanted to ride over were now on my right hand side. Sliding in a must-stay-on-bike manner past the roots and round the next left hander was brilliant fun, just drifting everywhere, but clearly not very fast! I got so much mud in my clip pedal that I couldn’t clip in again for the next three jumps so I had to roll them like a pansy. At this point you just had to hope that everyone else had fallen off too, otherwise any chance of a good position was right down the pan.

Third place on the podium for me!

In the event I finished 3rd which I was pretty stoked about, and came 3rd overall in the series. So after a slightly fitful start to the year, things have all come good and I’ve exceeded all my goals and expectations. Really looking forward to next year now!