Joe Smith crowned British Downhill Champion

Team Chain Reaction Cycles PayPal rider Joe Smith was crowned British Downhill Champion over the weekend at the final round of the British Downhill Series in Antur Stiniog, North Wales.

Antur Stiniog also played host to a special Legends of UK Downhill JMC Memorial race, celebrating the life of the late Jason McRoy. Team Manager Nigel Page reports:

What a weekend to finish off the 2015 downhill season! Antur Stiniog hosted the final round of the BDS as well as a special Legends of UK Downhill JMC Memorial race which was a really special occasion to celebrate the life and race career of the late great Jason McRoy, who sadly passed away 20 years ago now, whilst in the prime of his life and the first UK downhill rider to hit the big time in international racing, which led the way for many after him and a huge inspiration to me personally that got me into riding bikes again in the mid-1990's.

The Legends Race

The Legends race seemed a big thing and there were tons of current and past UK legends who turned up to race and give it their all. Rob Warner, who had been taking it super seriously and been to Antur six times previous to practice, was bigging up the race and it was great to see so many old rivals and friends turn up to race, and after a few runs everyone was riding super well and really fast.

Just after 1.00pm on Sunday we all set off for our seeding race and Steve Peat unsurprisingly took the win with Will Longden second, myself in third, 3.5 seconds back from Peaty, Dave Wardell fourth and 2014 masters World Champion and my long time rival Tim Ponting in fifth. Warner was back in eighth, just behind his good friend and legend Lee Bertram in seventh. The bet between these two was whoever lost between them had to have the other one's race time tattoo'd on them. Pretty funny stuff.

In the end Peaty decided everyone apart from Berty and Warner would stop halfway down the track on their race runs where JMC's ashes had been spread together with a JMC tree planted in memory of Jason and to celebrate the great Antur Stiniog facility. We all heckled Warner on his race run but he finished slower than Berty so now has to have another crap tattoo to go with the others…

The serious racing – Elliott Heap takes third

Now onto the serious racing and our Junior rider Elliott Heap put together a great final run to finish third place in the Juniors in amongst some World Class Juniors. Well done fella. Elliott has another year in Juniors in 2016 so this is a good end to the season for him and great motivation for a winter of training.

Elite racing

Team riders Joe Smith and Mike Jones were ranked first and second in the points going into this final round and Joe just needed a good result to clinch the championship.

The track got really slick and super windy for the finals but the lads did great, Mike Jones finished second for the day just behind ex-Chain Reaction Cycles team rider Matt Simmonds who is really fast on this track as he has a lot of power and Joe finished fourth which was good enough to clinch the 2015 Championship. This is an amazing result for him and the team on the new 2016 Nukeproof Pulse.

Mike's second place secured him third overall to go with his amazing fourth place finish at the World Championships just a few weeks ago, so a massive well done lads. Great work.