After hearing rumours of heavy rain and even snow forecast for the weekend in North Wales I was pleasantly surprised by the sun on arrival at Nant Gwrtheyrn for the first round of the Halo BDS. I arrived mid-afternoon on the Saturday in time for an hour or two of practice; I stayed at the bottom section of the track shooting riders who still had enough energy to ride until the end of the day.

Adam Halling riding the bottom section in the sun

As the time went on, more and more riders were calling it a day and there were longer gaps in between each rider so I resorted to the cafe where every photographer, videographer and media man was rinsing the free wi-fi provided. There was a good atmosphere in the cafe with hot food for sale and a bar, as well as showing Scott Marshall’s ‘Speed Kings’ which went down well with the packed crowd. Sockets were contested over by ‘togs and videogs’ in order to charge batteries and laptops in the race to get content online the quickest.

Gee Milner, Callum Biggin and Tim Lake editing the days shots

The weather outside got progressively worse and those who weren’t lucky enough to stay in the on site cottages started to retreat to their tents, vans,cars and motorhomes for a good night sleep before an early start in the morning. However it was far from a good nights sleep with the heavy rain and extreme wind causing havoc with tents and gazebos. We awoke to the sight of broken easy-ups and thick fog.

After eating breakfast at the cafe I started to make my way up the hill for practice, the track was a lot muddier than the day before but the riders still seemed to be enjoying it. 11 o clock came so it was time to start seeding runs, as the Juveniles, Youths and Women rode down it was onto the Juniors. However a few riders in the riding was stopped, there was a bit of confusion as to why this was but we were informed that it was because one of the Juniors had crashed and injured himself pretty badly. There was a long delay as the paramedics figured out the best way to get him onto the main road from the hill. It was decided that the nearby spectators and riders would all have to help which resulted in a combined effort by everyone to get him to the ambulance.

Riders and spectators helped to get the rider to the ambulance

Because of the delay  that this caused the race organisers decided to scrap seeding and go straight to race runs in order to keep to schedule. Manon Carpenter took the win in the elite women, MtbCut’s Fraser Mcglone took junior, Nathan Vials claimed the top spot in expert and so it was on to the Elites.

Tear-Offs were essential due to the conditions on race day

With a packed field of 40 elites it was anyone’s guess who was gonna take the win, obviously the likes of Peaty, Fairclough and Beaumont being favourites. However it was Al Bond who went into the hot seat after his storming run. More riders crossed the finish line but Bond stayed in the hot seat, neither Brendan Fairclough of Matti Lehikoinen knocked him off the top spot. It was down to Steve Peat who was up at the split and looked to surely take it until he crashed on the very last section of the track, this placed him second with Beaumont still to ride. Sure enough Marc Beaumont flew down the hill and put 4 seconds on an already impressive 2:20 from Al Bond, It finished Steve Peat 3rd, Alex Bond second and Marc Beaumont 1st who started where he left off from last season.

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