Jack is flying up to Newcastle on Thursday for the UK School Games. Look out for him on Channel 4 on 18th September, early in the morning(7 or 8 am), as they are covering it.

Some news you will be pleased to hear. Jack won Littledog and Onederdog in Brighton a couple of weeks ago, quite convincingly. Attached photo.

British Cycling asked him to join the Talent Team for a training camp in Holmbury for a couple of days, then over to Belgium to race. Jack came a fantastic 5th, with a lot of the European Champs there. He was the best placed of the 9 from British Cycling and isn’t even in the TT Squad. He has however, been advised that he should apply for the Olympic development Programme. Attached photo. There is a good write up on the VC Deal website if you want to see. http://www.activfolkestone.com/cgi-bin/vcdeal/show-report.cgi?id=514

Once the Uk School Games are over, Jack wants to concentrate on Cyclo-Cross, both Nationaly and the London League. He will then turn all his attention to Mountain Biking in the new year.

Many thanks again for all your help.

Iain and Elisa Finch

The Urban bikes have arrived and are already available through our independent dealer network.

Visit the new 2011 Whyte website for more deatils …………………………

www.whytebikes.com

Also available very soon will be the 2011 Whyte catalogue, order a copy now through the website.

Lategan brothers conquer Trans Baviaans 24h extreme MTB event :

Team Supercars’s Heine and Pieter Lategan won the 230km Trans Baviaans mountain bike marathon between Willowmore and Jeffreys Bay in the Eastern Cape South Africa on Saturday 14 August.

They completed the race – the longest of its kind in the world – in 8:15:17 breaking their own record of last year with 40 minutes. They finished 16 minutes ahead of their closest challengers Dave Morison ,Stuart Marais and Charles Keey(Blend Property Group)8:31:31 and Tony Conlon and Vickus Boshoff(Marsilio Projects)8:38:51 completing the podium.

Results as follows :

Men :

1.Pieter en Hein Lategan(Supercars) 08.15.17

2.Dave Morison en Stuart Marais (Blend Property Group) 08.31.31

3.Tony Conlon en Vickus Boshoff (Marsilio Projects) 08.38.51

Women :

1.Ischen Stopforth en Lise Olivier (Bizhub) 09.59.01

2.Andrea von Holdt en Gail Willimott (The Cherries) 10.31.43

3.Catherine Townsend en Heidi Koen (Merrell Outventure 2) 11.29.54

The Brighton Big Dog was the one we were all looking forward to, finally the whole team together again for the first time since the Muc-off 8.

6 hours in the day time is far less punishing a task than all the other enduro’s I’ve endured this summer. It was Louise’s birthday, so we proper wanted to win. We had entered female pairs, along with Chloe and Rebecca, Hannah entered mixed pairs with one of the MuleBar boys.

Louise came in ahead of the other female pairs, so we were in the lead from the start. I didn’t check out the course before my race lap, but I’d heard it was a good one. But I was feeling really ill, it’s been going around my house, and my stomach was the size of a football! The start was uphill and my bloated tummy was giving me stomach cramps. As I crawled up spinning my lowest gear slowly, a dude on a single speed asked me if my gears had packed up. I was very indignant, my Whytie would never let me down like that. I covered his ears and told the guy that I was pregnant. Ha.

After ten minutes or so, the cramps eased and my stomach got visibly smaller, but I had been overtaken by second place female pairs. The course was wonderful, really rooty and slippy, there was no chance of switching your brain off and plodding up a hill, it was tech throughout and full concentration was needed even on the flattest parts. It started pouring with rain, but since I wasn’t pushing myself as hard as usual, I didn’t crash for once! We went over a motorway bridge, which I thought was a cool touch. It kinda gave you a weird sense of “the outside world” after being lost for half an hour in pure, wet, slippy, single-minded concentration.

I didn’t manage to catch second (now first) place by the time I got to change-over point. But by the time Louise came back from her second lap we had the lead by 8 minutes. I was fired up and charged out on my second and last lap. The course had got way more slippy, looking a timelaps is really funny as average lap times were going up by 10- 20 minutes! We won the race by nearly 30 minutes in the end, our sure lead allowed me not to have to go out for a third lap, and greeted Louise with a bottle of fizzy wine at the end instead.

I was disappointed in the weather, it’s my 4th enduro race and it rained again. I don’t know how to imagine one in warm, chilled out weather now, where everything must be so much less stressful, with no kit changes or bike cleaning needed. I’m jealous of the people who have experienced that.

But it was made more fun by the crowd of people around, everyone was buzzing, and because no-one was sleep deprived, conversation flowed freely and happily. The podium was the best and loudest I’ve ever been on. Louise and I were on top, with Rebecca and Chloe in third, and a couple of super-cool Dynamo girls in second. Hannah won mixed pairs, and Jimmy, our sponsor won male teams. So we cheered and cheered and cheered, and then the whole crowd sang Happy Birthday to Louise. All in all, it was a wicked event, and the only enduro I think I will book onto again next year!

–

Anna Glowinski

http://www.women-on-wheels.co.uk/index.html

I was drafted in to race the Bontrager 24/12 by my mates at the Joyriders camp. It meant wearing a black and orange jersey with white, pink and blue shorts, but I dealt with it. I felt a little guilty for ruining the style of Whytie, but he dealt with it too. I was the second rider to go out for our mixed team of 4. I hadn’t seen the course but I’d heard great stuff. Sure enough, I was thrust over a bridge and onto some off-camber single track the moment I set off. I’m pretty unfit, as I’ve been in the Alps riding downhill and getting ski lifts back up, my arms are pumped but my legs have forgotten how to pedal. I asked Whytie to do all some more work and we did alright, we got to the top of a long fire road, and ignored the free ice cream on offer, spying some woods coming up.

I was surprised, but happy, about how rocky the course was. Most of the course was out-the-saddle work, with the melon-sized boulders and slippy roots crossing the path making it necessary to keep shifting my weight around. After my time away I felt uber-confident on the downhill sections and put Whytie to the test, pushing his limits to ensure that no-one overtook us on those bits. He held up pretty good, but crashing was inevitable, I wanted to go too fast and everything was so slippy, but it was all harmless yet embarrassing types of crashes. I saw loads of people wearing knee and shin guards, and I was wondering if this was a response to the gnarly course, or simply a new trend that I haven’t noticed yet.

The course went through the campsite at roughly the midway point, giving the riders a grateful second opportunity to experience civilization and cheering, clapping nutters that appeared to stand on the track side all day and all night. The whole course was rideable, but with a few steep inclines, that tended to bottle-neck and force you off the bike. Finally we descended along a grassy track that developed serious braking bumps throughout the day.

We were a fun team, with one rider being picked up on the day. Fastest girls of the night were getting around 41 minutes, so I was pleased with my fastest lap time of 47 mins. Err, happy enough to think I need to get fit again and treating every lap like back-to-back cyclo-cross training. 50 minutes guns blazing, love it! 3 hours off, then another 50 minutes, it was pretty sweet.

Yet again though, the rains came, and I have come to associate enduro mountain bike racing with misery and demoralisation. Everything I owned was soaked, and after my final dark, muddy lap, I was so desperate to get into a (wonderfully warm-thank you Bontrager) shower, that I didn’t close my tent properly and it got flooded. It still makes me feel tearful to think about it now, I was so tired and not being able to sleep because everything is damp is just a really, irrationally sad situation. I do wonder what a warm, dry 12 hour event would be like, and I bet it’d be loads nicer.

Anna Glowinski

Congratulations to Jack Finch the UK’s Youth, National MTB Champion.

He recently took time out of his busy race schedule to show http://www.londoncyclesport.com/ his Whyte 19 Works.

Read more @ http://www.londoncyclesport.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1447:jacks-whyte-19-carbon-works-xx&catid=40:your-bikes&Itemid=96

Congratulations to Gary Lake, Editor of www.cyclistno1.co.uk for completing his 1st solo 24 hour enduro and for placing 14th out of 56 riders in the “nutty” category!

Gary rode the carbon e-120 for most of the race with the Whyte 19 as a back up.

Read about Gary’s experience @ http://www.cyclistno1.co.uk/blog/amateur-mtb-marathon-gary-rode-24.htm

Billy in action at the XC Nationals wearing his new Whyte skin suit.

Billy’s race report:

At the weekend I used my whyte 19, sram xx with a gearing of 39 chainring and 32 cassette, which was super fast and comfortable on the dry and dusty circuit.
Gridded number 1 I had a good start and from lap 1, 3 of us were away…

On lap 2, the 3rd place rider tried to overtake me but ploughed into me sending me into a tree cutting myself from ankle to the top of my back ! The impact also seemed to shred my tyre………
I caught the leaders back up with this tyre and struggled to keep up as the tyre was now flat, none the less I got to the pits with this wheel and stopped and changed, meanwhile the leaders had attacked and got a gap, I slipped into 6th and played catchup for the rest of the race to finish a sore sore 4th place….

Billy.

Read about Cyclist No 1’s Editor, Gary Lake and his preparations for a 24 hour solo.

Gary is being supported by Whyte with the supply of an e-120 and 19c for the race.

http://www.cyclistno1.co.uk/blog/amateur-mtb-marathon-what-bike.htm