Mountainbiking Association of Dublin

The final round of the 2008 K-Capital series took place yesterday in Castlewellen Co. Down. The race, hosted by XMTB, was a fitting end to the league with a top-class trail and excellent organisation.

MAD has done really well this season, winning three of the league categories - Ashling Corkery in Sport Women, Melanie Spath in Elite Women and Oisin Boydell in Expert Men. Ryan Sherlock rode strongly in every race with a fantastic TORQ-fuelled overall 4th place in Elite Men. Fergal J Kilkenny and Steve Scrivener racked up top-10 finishes in Masters and Experts respectively and have their sights set on the podium later this year.  (more…)

This past weekend saw fantastic success for club members Ryan Sherlock and Melanie Späth in Round 1 of the British NPS XC and Marathon races in Thetford, England. Melanie fended off almost everything Britain had to throw at her with superb 2nd places in quality fields on both days, just losing out to multiple British champs Jenny Copnall on Saturday and Sally Bigham on Sunday by a margin of less than 1 minute over 4 hours and 20 mins of racing in the 100km event. Ryan suffered a nasty crash in the XC race on Saturday while running in about 15th place after starting from the rear of the pack and retired early to prepare for Sunday’s 100km Marathon, where he took a fine 3rd place in 3:55:55 while riding under the Torq team banner.

Both riders document their escapades on blogs, which can be found here and here. Pictures of the XC race and Marathon are online here and here.

Congratulations to both riders from all in MAD and we look forward to seeing more success in the future!

Sean

Easter Parade At Moneyscalp

This Sunday, 23rd March, round two of the International K-Capital MTB XCO Series will be held at Moneyscalp Forest near Newcastle in County Down. Round one of the series in Bray attracted a record 263 entries. The event is promoted by Banbridge Cycling Club. Confusion has been caused in some circles as to the venue, with Tollymore being listed in the calendar. The race was originally set for Tollymore but on the advice from the NI Forest Service the race had to be switched to Moneyscalp Wood, which in fact is an annex of Tollymore. (more…)

The 2008 race season is upon us already. Round 1 of the K-Capital cup takes place in Kilruddery estate this Sunday. Read Andy Pott’s Preview for the low-down on what to expect. Kilruddery is one of the best XC courses in the country, very varied and challenging and there’s a huge amount of anticipation about this first race.

We’ll have a whole new generation of MAD riders trying out racing for the first time in the Sports category. Several will also be making the leap from Sports into the Expert and Masters categories. Ryan will still be representing us in Elites and will face some fierce competition. The forum is busy with talk of race preparation and gauntlets being thrown.

The MAD committee will be present on both days to distribute licences, collect club dues and solve your personal problems. Find them in the MAD Tent Village.

www.kcapitalcup.com