ZealOptics NPS Round 4 - Butter Mountain

July 05

The NPS circus headed south to Butter Mountain for round 4.

The Track

Starting on a specially prepared start ramp, riders quickly built up speed heading towards two bermed corners shooting into the first straight where pumping the ground and pedaling kept up the momentum and many riders used up a good bit of energy that would be needed towards the bottom of the course.

At the end of the straight the riders were faced with a rocky, rooty corner that gave a lot of trouble, another short flat section and the course swung right and riders started to build speed. With a couple of line choices, the course followed a nearly straight line down the hillside with alternating cambers, dips, roots and rocks all there to catch you out as you headed towards the gully section. This was a lot of fun, brakes off, a few different lines riders could wall ride either side of the gully keeping up speed before plunging into ‘the dark section’ were even in the scorching weather, the sun never shone.

Take too long for your eyes to adjust and you hit the dirt, a tree or whatever else you couldn’t see. Due to the sun not being able to penetrate here, it was pretty mucky and refused to dry out over the weekend with many riders choosing to run mud tyres when most of the rest of the track was pretty dry.

The final part of the top half was a nightmare, a root infested off camber bank saw most riders, including some of the fastest, resorting to taking a foot off and pedaling rather than disappear down the bank into the deep mud. Survive this section and you hit the fire road broken up by three bus stops. This was well pedally and tested even the fittest riders as they raced towards ‘The Gap’.

The photos don’t do this one justice, it’s a big jump ok, with a nice wide take off and big well surfaces (if a little flat) landing. What freaks people out about this one is the depth of the hole you’re jumping over. It must be 10 feet deep, filled with hay and a couple of old mattresses just in case you end up in there. Landing this, it’s a well made right hand berm, find the straight line through the next few corners and into a tricky left hander with a nightmare stump and root than caught out more than a few. A few more flat corners and a nice man made rock garden later and you were in ‘The Field’ This consisted of a bit of pedaling and some flat out, no brakes corners before jumping into the final gully with two hip jumps on the fastest line leading into the short sprint to the finish. The track was enjoyed by most and was a great test of skill, fitness, strength and ability to ride different surfaces as the track went from dry forest, to deep mud, to fire track to more dry forest and to a grass finish.

The Racing

U14

With the longer course spreading the riders out a bit more than usual Conor O’Neill took the win ahead of Niall Keogh and Michael Mahon. None of this was enough however to remove the missing Darryl Wade of the top of the NPS league table.

U16

Seanan O’Riordan was back to winning ways after missing round 3 knocking Mr. consistent, Cathal Hicky into 2nd and last weeks winner Karl O’Sullivan into 3rd. Seanan and Cathal are now joint first in the league!

Vets

Only two entries this week with David McManus looking invincible and favourite for next weeks nationals, ahead of Tom Clogher.

Masters

With Marty and Joe absent, Mark Dickson got to go one step better than his second last week with a convincing win in the masters, and to take the overall lead in the league. Shane Murphy was second with the Banana Man himself, Carl Young completing the podium. A special mention goes to Ian McIntyre who is back racing after an injury and putting in a respectable time.

Ladies

Again, great to see some competition in the ladies category with Michele taking the win ahead of Aiofe O’Donoghue. Take a look at the times for both runs and you’ll see the Aiofe is getting closer.. Watch out Michele!

Senior

With the usual suspects missing this week, Wallace Irwin took top honours with a massive winning margin of 15 seconds. I saw him ride the nightmare mud section before the fire road, feet up, and flying, it was obvious he was going well and deserved the win. Brian O’Sullivan and Bobby St Ledger rounded off the top three with only 1 tenth between them.

Juniors

Dan Wolfe was again unstoppable and posted the second fasted time of the day to take the win ahead of Steven McClintock and local Darren Quille.

Elite

With only 5 Elite riders, it was anybody’s game. Michael Cowan led after the first run, but Stephen Beattie proved that round 3 wasn’t a fluke and he is fitter than he says he is after posting the fastest time of the day. Michael was second and Tom Power got his first NPS podium of the year.

This was another great NPS race, fantastic weather, challenging track, good racing and slick organization from the Quills and Newbridge Cycling Club.

Now for the bad news.

To everyone’s surprise, race organizers along with the team manager were informing riders on the day the race was an E3 with precious UCI points up for grabs for the 5 fastest riders. This caused a great deal of excitement as only riders holding UCI points can enter world cup races. The 5 fastest riders on the day were as follows:

Steven Beattie

Dan Wolfe

Michael Cowan

Tom Power

Steven McClintock

After some investigation after the race, IrishDH can now report that this info appears to be incorrect. The Butter Mountain race is not listed on the UCI website as an E3 and therefore it looks like we will have 5 seriously disappointed riders. At this point it is not clear how this confusion was caused. IrishDH would like to encourage the Cycling Ireland MTB committee to publicly state as soon as possible whether or not this race was or wasn’t an E3 to avoid any confusion..

A full selection of photos courtesy of Nigel Elder are available in the gallery

For a full list of results click HERE