Downhill on the HB.130

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The weekend of the 23rd and 24th saw the second round of the Irish Downhill Mountain bike Series being held in Bree, County Wexford. This round was dedicated as the Irish National Championships, and over 200 riders from all across the island had made their way to this small forest to compete for the Irish championship.

Having raced a few downhill races in the last few years I decided I’d enter myself, just for fun, and see how I could get on having never raced downhill on my HB130.

In a small forest the track was short, around two minutes for most people, however it was filled with features from rock gardens, wooden drops to step downs, and rooty sections. It was very fast and was running extremely dry due to the lack of rain over the past week or two.

Throughout Saturday’s practice session I made a few slight changes to my set up, mainly to do with the suspension to compensate for some of the big compressions from the larger features on the track. By the end of the day I had the bike set up perfectly for the mixture of features on the fast running track and was excited for Sunday’s racing. Having previously converting the HB130 to a mullet set up, meant the bike cornered exceptionally well whilst still having the bigger 29 inch wheel up front to help roll over those technical sections.

Throughout Sunday everything on my HB130 was running perfectly. To be honest I was quite surprised at how well this little bike handled the downhill track. Another benefit of being on the HB130 was that I could actually pedal to the top of the track for a few runs, beating the uplift queues and fitting more practice in on Sunday morning.

Sunday saw a lot of rainfall which changed track conditions and made line choice a little more exciting for the race. The crowds gathered for the afternoon’s racing and times were tight in the first categories to make their way down the track. I managed to get a plenty of practice runs in during the weekend so I was feeling pretty good for my race run, aiming for a top ten finish in the elite category. I managed to piece most of my run together, however a line mistake near the top of the track as well as a mistake on the final technical section of the trail led to me losing a few places.

Overall it was a great weekend on the HB130 and showed me just how capable this trail bike is. Despite the bike being more suited to singletrack riding, the Hope HB130 was able to cope with every feature on track. After such a great weekend I’ll definitely be back for the next round at the end of August.



Words: Harry Thompson
Pictures: Atom Creates, Cahir Media, EightyNine Media