Heres something that will be of interest in a great part of Italy.

“From May 2008, Irish international Olympic rider, Tarja Owens, is leading mountain bike guided holidays in the beautiful mountains surrounding Lake Garda, in Northern Italy.

If you want a relaxing weekend cycling through the Vineyards of the Trentino Valley, or a weeks specific mountain bike tutoring with an Olympic athlete on some of the best trails in Europe, your holiday will be tailored to your needs.

As a once off, All Mountain Experience is offering the opportunity to preview this years World Championships Downhill and 4x course. From 2nd until 4th May you can partake in a test-event held on the course. Or perhaps you prefer to experience the thrill of the 2008 World Mountain Bike Championships races in June. All Mountain Experience will organise it all, you just have to book your flight and arrive.

See the site : www.AllMountainExperience.com for our exclusive offers, or mail tarja@allmountainexperience.com“

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The 2008 Downhill Mountain Bike season got kick started in Moneyscalp Woods, nestled in the scenic Mourne Mountains last weekend!
 
Over 150 riders turned up and signed to compete in Round 1 of the CRC Winter series.  This was the perfect opportunity to blow out the cobwebs and to find out who is on the gas and who ate all the pies!
 
The course was challenging, it started out on the fire road, where you quickly got up speed and then dropped into a bus stop, the bus stop shot you out on to the fire road, where you had to sprint like a madman for about 100mtrs before you entered the forest.  The pedalling continued as you flew into the woods, you then had to negoiate the tight turns while trying not to slide out on the roots!  Next, you had to get down a tricky rooty section which led you into a little gap jump over the stream ( if you were going fast enough), this is where the fun started!  Berms and flat out off camber rooty sections were your reward for making the effort on the pedally top section and this led you down to the infamous step down and flat out left berm that catches out many a rider and then the final sprint to the finish!  All that in about 1.30!
 
Most of Irelands top Downhill talent was in attendence, the most notable absentees were Ben reid who is in California training, Greg O’ Keeffe was building a wall in Tom Powers house, Jason Murphy was doing a spot of winter training in Morzine!  Ewan Doherty took a nasty fall in practice and broke his arm, but is hoping to be fit for the 1st Maxxis Cup in Portugal in March!
 
Small bikes were the order of the day and the fastest time went to Dan Wolfe in Elites on his Turner 4x machine with a time of 1.16!  He was closely followed by another man on a mini DH bike Kona’s Glyn O Brien, still whooping the young lads!  Stevo Beattie was flying on his little Commencal and finished 3rd in Elite.  With a few of the big names missing or injured in the Junior category, Seanan O Riordain stomped the juniors to win by nearly 3 seconds!  021racing got it’s first podium of the season, Denis Corkery put together a very good second run to move from 5th to 3rd place in the competitive Senior category!  021′ s Richard Thornhill rounded off the top 20 in the Senior category and Rory O’ Keeffe finished in the top ten in Elites for the 1st time in 3 years!
 
The next round is on Sunday the 24th of February, get your ass up there it’s worth the drive!

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.

Happy Christmas to one and to all. The team will be out riding a number of days over the Christmas period. Keep an eye on the forum as for when or ring the usual people.

Here we go,

I haven’t got the foggiest idea where to start writing?

I suppose I can start with the last race of the season, at the Whitehorse organised by 021racing’s Tom power.

As usual Tom promised and delivered a great event. The Whitehorse Forest is one of the sketciest woods in Ireland, it is incredibly difficult to ride in the dry and if it rains the soil feels like your riding on ice!

The toughest section of this years course was the Rock Slab, this was a steep rock Slab section, that had three runs down it and it had a very hard entry to it, quite a few people fell victim to it.

There was 116 riders who took part in this end of season race, some chasing points to become the overall NPS winner, like Karl ‘ BananaMan’ Young who won on the day and the overall series. Tom employed the services of NACC Event’s from the UK to provide Live Timing, something we hope to see a lot more of at next years races! Tom couldn’t quite manage the fastest time of the day and handed victory to Dan Wolfe in the Elite category with a great time of 1.36. Ewan Doherty, showed why he deserved to be wearing the Irish National Champs jersey, had a fine win in the Junior category.

There has been a lot of positives from the 2007 Downhill Mountain Bike season. One of the best things, was the the Irish Downhill Team, where Joe Ward and Glyn O Brien transformed a shoddy outfit into the professional setup witnessed at The World Championships in Fort William in September. There have been some great results achieved by Irish riders this season. Ben reid finished 6th at the European Champs in Greece, 15th at the World Champs in Fort William, has had a top 10 at the World Cup in Schladaming, Austria! Greg O’ Keeffe enjoyed his first year as an Elite rider and set some good times, most notable results for Greg were 16th place at the European Champs in Greece, 44th at the World Champs, when he could barely walk! 1st place at round 3 Of the Welsh Dragon Series in Mynnd Du and 3rd place at the SDA race in Fort William. Glyn O Brien seems to be getting faster as he gets older and finished an increible 2nd place at the World Masters Championships in Pra loup, France.

Back to the local scene, everyone is anxiously waiting for the Ballyhouras to open, they are months behind schedule, but promise to offer some of the best trails around!