Llangollen BDS Race Report from Nial Oxley

Nuke Proof's young ripper and son of the mystical Beardy Ed, Nial Oxley had a mixed bag at round 4 of the British Downhill Series. A big crash in seeding didn't do much good for the finals. Find out how he got on below:

Last weekend I was at the Halo BDS round 4 at Llangollen in Wales, one of the steepest tracks in the UK. When I got there on Friday night the rain was hammering down and the weekend looked set to be grim. It was hard just to stay dry. In the morning it was sunny and warm though and it couldn't have been better. When we got to the uplift it took an hour and 5 minutes to get on the uplift, apparently some of the flatbeds hadn't turned up. Eventually we got on the track and it was well worth the wait. The track there is super steep and has well built berms which you can just plough into followed by some nice drops at the bottom. I was lucky enough to be given a pair of the new Mud King spiked tyres by the guys from Continental and they were just fantastic on this track. On Sunday I did a nice slow run to start off the day then got ready for seeding. On my seeding run near the bottom, on the first drop, I went in way too hot and my front wheel landed flat and I had an enormous crash and qualified last.......Oh dear! For my race run it wasn't ideal because my arm was really suffering from arm pump but I just had to stick it out, my run was ok and it felt good in some parts, but I could tell I was off the pace. This was probably partly due to me having been off the bike waiting for my broken arm to heal. I hadn't been able to ride for 6 weeks and wasn't in the right mind set. At the bottom I ended up 5th so not too bad but I wanted a lot more. At least I'll get another go on this track at the national champs!

Special thanks to my sponsors; Booicore, NukeProof, Continental and Great Rock.

Nial