On Friday last some of us made the trip up to Croagh Patrick to ride it on our bicycles.  After a few nightcaps in the pub we crawled into whatever space we had made for ourselves in between bikes and bags in the back of the van for what felt like 5minutes of sleep. . We started off up the long climb at 5 bells and to my surprise met people already on the hill. . . A nice lady out for a quite stroll, a legend who almost made it down by foot as quick as we did on bikes, 3 lunatics aiming to get up and down the hill 9 times in 24hrs, plus a number of tents, nice a place as any for a spot of camping i suppose.

We got back to the bottom, after a few gnarly incidents and a few busted parts, then we headed for derroura and did a lap there, which was… fun!

All in all, it was a great weekends riding, all wrapped up into 7 hours on a fine Saturday morning. Here’s a video Gregoreous Callaghan made.

Congratulations to Luke Cornforth on board his Solid Mission 7 finished in a fantastic 3rd place in the Juvenile category at Round 1 of the British NPS in Rheola!

021racings Cameron Cornforth finished a creditable 13th on his Solid Mission 9, not bad for his first year in  the Youth category. Kipper came down just ahead of Cam finishing up in 12th. Dan Sheridan had a great result finishing in 3rd spot in Youth!

021racings Greg O’ Keeffe on board his new Norco DH Team, Supplied by Irelands number one Norco dealer Moycullen Bike Works and with OCTuning looking after his FOX shocks, finished in a fine 16th place in the Expert category, just 6 secconds off the podium and the second fastest Irish rider behind Ben Reid! Hes happy with his progess returning from injury. Rob Davis didnt have the best weekend, finishing 36th in Expert on his Solid Mission 9 supplied by OCTuning. Gavin Carroll finished in 9th spot in Junior. Flow Racings Damo Duggan finished up in 20th Master

Big thanks, as always, goes out to OCTuning for traveling over to support us all and make sure the bouncy stuff stayed just the right amount of bouncy.

Well done to the lads, they should be flying in Kerry next week!

You can check out full results here on the Results page & you can find some pictures, videos and other goodys  aswell as keep an eye on coming events on the Brittish Downhill Series website here

The 2008 international downhill mountain bike season, got kick started in Gouveia, Portugal nestled in the Estrella mountain range last weekend!

The Maxxis Cup race has now established itself as the first proper race of the season and it attracts a huge entry from all over Europe.

A lot of Irish made the trip this year, with a strong contingent of boys from the North and D4 as well as an army from 021racing! 021 was represented by greg, Sean, James, Kevin Ryan, Kevin Boyd, Jason Murphy, Ben Mullens, Rob Davis and Rory! The trip began as we flew to Madrid, rented our Mini Bus and drove quite rapidily to Portugal. We enjoyed two full days of practice in sunny weather and we turned our mini bus in to our uplift and the spin to the top was nearly as enjoyable as coming down the mountain!

A partially new track greeted all the riders and what a track! Flat to the mat for nearly 3.30min if you were going well. The course was littered with ski jumps, drops, rock gardens and flat out corners.

First rider down was 021 new boy Rob Davis, who was riding like his old skool days, flat out but likes to hit the eject button! Rob got caught out trying to double a tricky drop and hurt his wrist quite bad, no racing for rob. Sean was next to come a cropper in the same place as Rob, the compression sent Sean flying over the bars and on to his head, also aggravating his long term ankle injury.

Sunday morning we were greeted to some wintery weather and qualifying. The top 150 fastest riders would go through to the main event. There were over 400 entries!! Everyone in 021 qualified except for the two Kevins and James who was to busy looking after Brendan Fairclough’s Iron Horse (ranked 12th in the world!!) as well as all the dublin boys, as all their bikes were hanging!

In the final, Jason missed his run, Rory 92nd,went quicker by 6 seconds with a 3.15, Greg 38th, improved with a comfortable 3.03 after crashing in his qualifying run, Ben 117th, had a bit of a crash, Sean, DNS, as his ankle was wrecked. Ben Reid crashed out, the first time in a long time, just goes to show it can happen to anyone! Gee Atherton destroyed the field by 4 seconds, the man is a beast! Dan Atherton 2nd and Cedric Gracia in 3rd.

At the end of the day, 021 enjoyed a successful weekend and an eventful night in Madrid on Sunday! If your talking to Ben Mullen, ask him what he thinks of Lady Boys!!!!

Timed runs of the track were done over Christmas. Rory has some up in the forum. The order was 1st Greg 2nd Rory 3rd Damien and 4th Sean. It was wet and greasy and it looks like in the dry quickest time will be around the 36 second mark I would think. A day will be organised soon for team members to set there times so everyone has the same conditions.