News

James Dabill wins BTC1

09/03/2010

James Dabill was riding for the first time with the No.1 bib and started the campaign to defend his 2009 British Title.
The venue was the superb Scarborough and Districts popular Harwood Dale site which is excellent. The problem is the type of terrain is affected heavily with the weather. Its good when dry or torrential rain but anything in-between it’s a nightmare with the clay/mud base.
The practice lap on the Saturday was wet and was ‘ok’ but the sections were simply too hard for all classes. The club sensibly changed all but one section for the Sunday and did what they could but with the overnight freezing conditions it made for a very hard event. It was still frozen in the morning, thawed a little with the sun and then started freezing again later in the day.
Dibs set off with an easy clean on section 1 and a mega clean on 2. He was in a very cool, calm and confident mood which has come after a winter’s hard training which has improved his focus and general mood on ‘race day’. Very confident in his own ability Dibs finished the first lap on 20 marks, eleven better than his pal Michael Brown in second. Things were close after the first lap because Dibs was late and incurred 6 time penalties so his lead was cut to only 5 marks.

Both Dibs and Michael went worse on lap 2, strange really but I think it had started to thaw slightly and the sections were very slippery. Dibs had five ‘5s’ on lap two and was starting to get a little frustrated. He finished the lap with an effortless clean on the last section (which he did on all three laps) and increased his lead to 9 marks with the last lap to go.

Pushing for time Dibs went on a roll and his last lap was simply world class with only 19 marks lost which proved his fitness and determination to the end. He won easily by 27 marks. Job done!