British Championships and World Masters MTBO New Forest

Written by Kevin Pickering, Organiser

The 3 races had 171 riders across the events with competitors from Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Spain, Sweden and Portugal competing in the World Masters League. Riders came from as far away as Inverness in the British Championships.

The Middle distance event was held on Saturday morning with the Sprint late afternoon in a different forest, a bit of a logistical difficultly but overcome with help from Wimborne and Wessex foot orienteers.

All 3 races were held in forests that had you slowing down on narrow twisting one-way trails, then going very fast on wider gravel forest roads and included some hills on the long race that had you pushing your bike up them. All races had a good element of orienteering in them and there was much discussion after the races as to the best route to go, sometimes backwards from the control to access faster paths. Riders have to keep to paths and tracks that are marked on the map and mistakes are sometimes larger than foot O as you are going so much faster.

Several paths were marked one way, as they were very narrow and in places quite fast, to save riders crashing into each other, and these worked well. We also had bridleways in the areas, which UK traffic regulations forbid racing on, so several controls were used to make sure you didn’t break these rules and gain an advantage.

It was good to see all the winning times were very close to the recommended MTBO guidelines. For those who took rather longer or it was their first attempt at MTBO. I hope it made them more determined to come back, improve their times and have great fun in the process. The feedback from this group was certainly positive. The challenge now is to try and provide more MTBO events in the South of England to keep these competitors interested in our sport.