This post has been a while coming for various reasons and it’s mostly all been said elsewhere a few weeks back. But I will say, that it was a great event with plenty of local familiar faces, either riding, organising, media-ing (yeah I know) or just coming along to watch.

Joe Bowman and Nick Hamilton from ThisiSheffield.co.uk, amongst others, were organising.

Rob Jolley was marshalling in the open section and also chief overseer of rider encouragement.

Bamford locals Alex Megson, Oliver Spence and Jack Read where racing, with Oli beating SPS sponsored Jack, coming 1st and 2nd in Youth, receptively. Irwin probably summed it up best: “I still can’t believe Oli beat Jack!”.

(THE) Alex Rankin (who made the Earthed series of MTB films) was filming for Freecaster along with a motley band of local video men (including myself), with a range of video cameras from camcorders and DSLRs to a GoPro helmet-cam in use as a zip-line camera. Alex explained the sort of thing he was after from us and gave out plenty of tips and advice while we walked up the track before the race runs. Having felt quite unprepared and like I was winging it for a fair bit of the race run filming (I’m used to having Saturday to scout the track and then know where I want to be for the Sunday race runs), I was very pleased with how most of it came out. A fair bit of my footage went into the official Freecaster video, including the novelty-tree-shot (which took about 5 minutes of shivering and hoping the tree would hold while waiting for a rider to come), so that was good.

After the race many headed straight to the Showroom cinema for Progression, Alex’s special edit for ShAFF of his Sprung and Earthed series of MTB films. There were plenty of laughs (mainly at Peaty crashing) and vintage footage from the early days of Downhill, it gave an idea of where the sport has come from and got to: its Progression – or, failing that, plenty of drunk racers to laugh at!

Following the film came Rob Warner ‘interviewing’ Steve Peat, I say ‘interviewing’ because, in classic Warner style, he hadn’t actually prepared anything and just relied on the audience for questions.

“Yes, you with the straight arm.”

“Josh Bryceland has just come in wearing a cap he thinks makes him look ghetto and cool.”

I think this actually worked better, with Warner providing some great banter and entertainment, while Peaty thought up good and in-depth answers. It was a laugh a minute, on a par with any stand up comic’s show, but also very interesting at the same time – a great end to a great day of mountain biking!

My video from the race:

Alex Rankin’s official race video from the event:

Some other videos are on RootsandRain.

Some of my better (edited) and general event pics are in the Image Gallery, all the rider pictures are on RootsandRain:

11-03-05 Peatys Steel City Downhill, 45 Pictures by Jeff.

Steel City DH, Greno Woods, 5th March 2011, 163 Photos

Other related pages:
Swinny’s Race Report on ThisiSheffield.
Joe’s Organiser’s Report, top results, thanks and sponsors on ThisiSheffield.
Full Results on RootsandRain.
Jack Read’s blog entry on Factory Jackson.