WMTB – round 2 at Coed Y Brenin.

Coed y Brenin visitor centre (old site) hosted the second round of the Welsh MTB league and again Towy Riders/TRCC were well represented in all of the categories. Once again racing commenced with the under 8’s, followed by the under 10’s and then the under 12’s, who raced the lower section of the technically stony and rooty course.

To all that have never been to Coed Y Brenin, it was the first forest to be developed for the sport of mountain biking and to this day retains its reputation as the sports premier location – therefore the course was guaranteed to be not for the faint hearted. It was truly MTB racing at its best. This was especially true for the under 8 and 10 course which saw them race on a proper mountain biking course – not like the cyclocross course that was in Margam a few weeks ago.

In the under 8’s we saw Garan, Freya and Cian battle with a very testing course with a podium position going to Garan as 3rd boy whilst Freya and Cian battled on for 5th placed girl and 8th placed boy respectively.

For the under 10’s Heledd was the only Towy Rider to brave the trip up to Coed y Brenin and came away with a well deserved 2nd place.

In the under 12 year category there was again only one brave Towy Rider, Iwan Evans, who battled the bigger and tougher under 12’s course and secured a podium position with his 3rd place finish in a very well fought contest.

Youth and Juvenile riders set off at the usual time of 11 o’clock accompanied with the women, sport male, veterans and grand vet racers, all tackling the full gruesome and extremely technical full course, with its rocks, stony descents and challenging drop offs.

Wayne Davies and Wayne Jones took 13th and 17th place respectively in the veteran category with Craig Godfrey in 10th position in the Sport category.

Nicholas Jones finished in 3rd position in the Youth category with Tanwen completing the course in 3rd position of the Youth girls.

For the Juvenile girls category Jessica, in another outstanding race took the 1st position.

For the junior boys Carwyn Davies and Geraint Godfrey raced hard and fast to complete the race in 4th and 6th positions respectively.

Overall – a great day of demanding racing and no mud in sight. Got to be a first for me. All we need now is to get some of our ladies out racing MTB and we will be represented in all categories.