Race Report: WP Downhill Series Round 2 - Paarl

This past Sunday was spent organising and racing at the second race in the WP Downhill 2013 series.  With it being Easter long weekend, we weren't expecting a big turnout and we were surprised that we managed to draw close to sixty riders. And that even included some brand new faces!

Madeleine and Reto pushing up to the start gate. Instagram photo by Wes

The day ran smoothly and it seems as if all riders were having fun. There was quite a strong cross wind and a few riders had unlucky crashes. Luckily no one got seriously injured.The race format for this year changed a bit and we are now enjoying one day races. This means that we have a whole six hours of practising and shuttling time after which all riders do one race run. After the race runs we have a short prizegiving and then the cleaning up starts.

The Paarl track is more beginner friendly compared to some of the other tracks used in the series. This however does not make it "easier" for riders. The faster one goes, the trickier it can become.

Arné going down the first rock garden. Instagram photo by Wes

The track starts out on a short pedally flat section and quickly dips down through a few rocks and starts descending. Here after a series of sandy turns follow which leads the rider to the rock garden followed by another gnarly but short rocky chute. For me the worst is over after that part and then I can relax a bit until another flat rock garden is reached which is followed by the road gap. There after it's smooth sailing all the way home with riders just ducking down a rock and over a few more small jumps and round some nice flowy corners to the finish line.

Hanco and I stayed teamed up during our practice runs and I am very grateful that he sacrificed his last practice run to help me fix the flat tyre I got going down the previously mentioned rocky chute. At first we thought it was just a normal puncture that the Stan's sealant would easily fix, but when we tried fixing it with a bomb, we soon saw there was a nice big slash on the sidewall of my rear tyre. I was quite impressed with Hanco's trick of using a R10 note as a tyre liner to cover the slash and prevent the tube from sticking through there when inflating.

Sideways goggles man aka Hanco showing us how it's done. Instagram photo by Wes

Although this happened just before racing and we managed to fix it in time, it still made me a bit nervous about getting another puncture on my race run. This made me take my race run a bit slower than I normally would have taken it. I am still happy to have ended in third position in the Elite Women category. I just wish there existed a Fun Women's category as I would feel much more comfortable competing there!

The podium: Rika Olivier in first position, Gina Nixon in second and Arné in third. Photo by Reto

Hanco felt that he didn't get as many practise runs in as he would have liked and thus felt a bit unprepared for his race run. However it didn't stop him from ending in 4th position in his category. 

When we got home (and after stuffing our faces with delicious Panarotti's pasta) we quickly added up the points for the WPDH team's pointslog. At the moment we are standing in fifth place. This might however change after the next race as some teams had to sit this race out.

Overall it was a succesful day and we managed to wrap it up without any serious incidents. It was really fun spending the day riding with awesome friends such as Madeleine and Reto and interacting with other riders and spectators.

The next race is in a month's time at the Jonkershoek track.

Read the full race report on Pinkbike with photos by ESP here.