Beth Crumpton Gives Her Input on WC Series

Beth Crumpton of the SCOTT Contessa UK team gives us an insight into her World Cup Series experience, where she took 16th at the UCI Rocky Roads Mountain Bike World Cup in Houffalize, Belgium. 

"On the first lap, I was riding in 6th position to the top of the hill and through the first feed station. I was a bit shocked to be riding this far up the field in such a short space of time in the race. Obviously this didn’t stick and I started to fall back, riding through in 10th after the first start loop, and with only one lap left there was all to play for! There were girls in touching distance, but also girls right on my tail trying to chase further up the field as well. I was starting to pull back some girls in the first climb until I got to the top and had a bit of a crash-fest… I managed to crashed going uphill somehow, then downhill and riding into a tree! In doing so this meant I lost quite a few places because we were all so close together. 

The rest of the lap I tried my best to catch the girls up, but after crashing I seemed to not get back up to speed and lost a bit of confidence. The climbs were utterly brutal in the race, with a burning throat sensation after every climb, but the descents were just real fun and I just enjoyed them! 

I finished the race absolutely spent, so near to making up two places in the closing stages, but I was totally happy with 16th spot and only 4 minutes down on the winner!  It just shows that the racing is so close these days, it’s costly to make mistakes!

This is something I took away from another awesome World Cup experience and loved every second of it!" - Beth Crumpton