A report from Herefordshire on the soggy ATBA-UK comp @ OTG
I'm not gonna lie, we all knew the
week prior Round 3 that the weekend was going to be a bit of a hit or miss situation; with weather reports telling us there would be torrential rain and those dedicated Mountain Boarders saying the competition was still going to go ahead, a lot of us were unsure about the outcome to say the least. But, nevertheless, Friday 15th July arrived and I found myself shoved into a cramped car, en-route to Herefordshire... Twitter in hand.
 The journey from Surrey to Herefordshire isn't the most interesting... especially when certain people are blaring out drum & bass at full blast, but thankfully, the sun decided to give us a warm welcome as we came close to the Welsh mountains.
After arriving at OTG, it become increasingly obvious that this wasn't going to be heaving with ambitious Mountain Boarders, mainly due to the fact that I could count the amount of tents on both hands.
This, however, didn't dampen the spirits of the people who did decide to brave the foreseeable rain. Friday was full of complaints and angry men... No, I'm not just saying that because I'm a girl... there were complaints about the weather, about the track being too slow, about the odds of the weekend going ahead, to be honest, it sucked, and the next thing I knew, everyone was either drinking copious amounts of tea, or hittin' something a bit stronger. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of dedicated riders out there who refused to give up, and carried on riding despite the little or no air they were getting, but eventually everyone decided to call it a night...
There was rain. A lot of rain. For many hours... and it was cold and it was definitely NOT summer.
Saturday came with a whole load of fancy surprises: from the annoyingly persistent rain to the sudden blazing heat that came when the sun fought its way out. It started off dreary, but like always, the good ol' British weather came through in the end, and allowed us to whip out them boards, cameras, and a shocking number of dogs (!) and the Round 3 Boarder Cross was underway!
Luckily (after all the rain) the track hadn't been effected much or at least no-one had told Joel Treliving who was riding awesomely fast, and not to be left out Mark peck & Aiden beamish were killing it despite Aiden beamish eating sh1t. He wasn't the only one though! Brindy changing as always pushed too hard over the triple, with the result he slid out on the landing giving away his lead in the pro final. It wasn't just in the Pro catagory where it was going off: There was close racing happening all over the place on Out to Grass's track of mostly-rollers & a couple of berms... Unfortunately I was too busy snapping away to really know who was doin' what where!
Now, I'm not going to pretend to know everything about Mountain Board freestlye, ‘cos honestly I was pretty darn surprised when I could tell that that spinney thing someone did was a 360. So, I decided that instead of disappointing you all by saying stuff like ‘some Australian dude spun all the way around off some kicker thing' I'd get some help from someone who actually knows what he's talking about. And that's where my good friend (even if he doesn't know he is) Matt Brind has stepped in to help. So, here's some of the 'crazy shit' that went down:
"The most impressive stuff from the weekend was from the "Pro Jam" (I say Pro Jam, it was more just set runs... still impressive though), which after a lot of moaning, went ahead and went off with a bang with Josh Maddocks and double backflip champ Andy Milenkovic stomping big BS cork 5s; and Andy even did a McTwist in the quarter pipe, which is very rarely seen. We also saw James Wanklyn doing regular and switch FS 5s and Joel Treliving proving his BX prowess by finding more speed than anyone, enough to try to 7 the last kicker.
Andy Brind was getting technical in the Seniors, tricking most features with switch 1s and FS & BS 3s in his runs but just lost out on the top spot by 2 points which was taken by Nial Potter-Farrant who was going big with 3s.
Emlyn Bainbridge won the juniors linking FS 3s & BS 5s, and Emmeline Thrower took the poor conditions into account and changed her line giving her the edge over the others, resulting in her winning the ladies."
When everyone wasn't engrossed in either competing or watching (and when it wasn't raining) some serious partying was going on, with a bad ass fire maze, a surreal midnight run down the green run and some quite... unique... bands playing, there was something to keep everyone entertained. And after many, many units of alcohol, quite a few boxes of pizza and much laughter over the questionable lyrics sung by one of the bands, it was time to hit the hay. Mountainboarders sure are characters...
The ATBA's Round 3 at Out to Grass was probably one of the few competitions (including the infamous World Power slide Championships of 2010) that I saw true dedication from all riders present. The most dedicated of which being Mr. Raphael La Roche, who was constantly trying to keep the atmosphere pleasant and motivated! Despite the rain, and despite the cold, the weather certainly didn't dampen spirits on this weekend :)
For all the results and other ATBA-UK series info check their website
Words & pics by Eveey Ruth with thanks to Matt Brind & Peter Hills.
Wanna know more Eveey photography then head along to her facebook page
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