Words by Jack Beezer, Photos by Theo Acworth
After the disappointment of round one being cancelled it was with much anticipation that I set off to Much Wenlock, looking forward to getting back on a boarder-x track and catching up with everyone again. The weather forecast looked promising and when we turned up it was obvious the effort that had been put into preparing the track, fully strimmed and groomed to perfection. Although similar to previous years there were small alterations, such as the inside line on the first corner being made more ridable yet with extra features added in leading to the choice between the easier fast outside line allowing you to carry much more speed or the more technical but far shorter inside line.

            Despite Fridays open practice seeming distinctly quiet come Saturday morning the centre was buzzing with around 110 riders entered into the racing, new chairman Raphael La Roche who’d worked tirelessly with all the other volunteers in the atba gave the speech at the riders meeting including a minutes silence for Muller, a big loss to mountain boarding. The riders got two qualifying runs each and produced some of the closest times ever seen at a boarding event with the whole of the elite being separated by around second in time. However at the end of the qualification it was Ben Rye who came out with the fasted time and one of the few to get a sub 30 second run. With the times so agonisingly close the afternoons racing was sure to be good, and it didn’t disappoint, the wide track offering the opportunity for overtaking, and re-overtaking. The afternoon of great racing looked set to be capped off in style with a very impressive line up for the elite final, a NoSno vs. MBS finale, Pete Tathem and JC of NoSno facing MBS’ Renny Myles and Matt Brind. As expected all four came out the gates neck and neck, forcing both JC and Renny into the inside line on the first corner, which hadn’t seen two riders abreast round it so far, resulting in the two colliding. However avoiding the carnage allowed Pete Tathem to take first followed by Matt Brind with Renny winning the battle to get up to take the third place.

            Saturday night saw mad antics as ever, with a DJ set up under a marquee at the bottom of the hill, and atboarders videos of the last few years being projected onto the roof. After the videos however the night quickly descended into the good humoured insanity which is expected, bags of hay being thrown across the marquee and massive take outs on anyone who dared enter the centre of the marquee. Special mention has to go to George for instigating most of it, Finn Parry for what looked like much practiced wrestling moves and Renny for taking any on violence that was thrown his way.

            Waking Sunday with heavy heads attention turned to the freestyle, each rider getting 5 runs to battle it out for a place in the 45 minute elite jam. Despite many big names missing the elite jam went off in style, with several riders all landing 720s the level of riding is undoubtedly rising but it was Joe Dickson with a 720 on both jumps who impressed the judges the most to take first place. Tom Read took second with one of his trademark frontflips followed by a BS Rodeo, and third place was taken by Matt Brind who pushed the level of riding all weekend with his massive 720s and generally stylish rotations. Ben Tweedie was also on form with backflips oozing style and along with Lawson David joined the seemingly huge number of riders busting out 720s, or attempts atleast!

            So all in all it was a sweet weekend, good to be back especially after the disappointment of round 1. Big well done to Raph and all the ATBA who worked so hard to make the event run so smoothly.