Nopesport

Control site or short cut warning, you decide.

The British Mountain Bike Orienteering Sprint Championships on Sunday, this coming weekend, promises to be the most intensive orienteering experience on a bike ever in the UK, even toping that at MOD Stafford earlier this year.

To be held on an ex-ammunition filling facility, now a huge Army and security forces training area, there are countless tracks, buildings, berms and walls, open grassland, forest tracks and underground bunkers. The riding is fast, technical and demanding. Not to mention closed areas of live ammunition, no short cuts or else!

To be held on an ex-ammunition filling facility, now a huge Army and security forces training area there are countless tracks, buildings, berms and walls, open grassland, forest tracks and underground bunkers. The riding is fast, technical and demanding.

The sprint discipline with an elite winning time of approx 25 mins is fast and furious racing, with 24 controls packed into just over 5 kilometres of twisting and turning course.

A prologue race will seed the riders for the final, the fastest starting last at 2 min intervals. A spectator control at ¾ distance with a live splits feed and commentary at the finish should bring an exciting atmosphere in the closing stages of the race.

Organiser and Planner ‘stodge’ has returned this evening from a final rece of the area with legs plastered in paintball ‘paint’, the area having just been used for a 1600 person ‘North vs South’ paintball festival. The paintball website gives loads of info and photographs of this unique mountain biking area, of course not open to the general public.

Saturday will see the Middle distance championships at nearby Hanchurch woods, offering pleasant mixed woodland over a hillside, with tracks ranging from fast forest tracks to fast twisting singletrack providing entertaining riding. 

Online entries close midnight Thursday, and entry on the day is available.

Final details for the middle distance and for the sprint distance can be found on the Walton Chasers website