Flowbikes UK

JULY 09
4x NATIONAL ROUND 5 / NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS @REDHILL EXTREME GLOURCESTER

The weekend of July 4/5th saw the National 4x series roll into Gloucester, at the Redhill Extreme centre. Saturday was round 5 of the National Series while Sunday would be the National Championships. With local favourite and Flow team member Tom Gethin still out injured, it would be down to rest of us to fly the Flow flag. Through the moto's the team were looking strong, with Birthday boy Scott winning all his Junior moto's, Dave Roberts 3 wins and a 2nd in Seniors, myself three 2nd places and a 3rd in Elite. Unfortunately none of us managed to gain a main final position, Scott easily won his small final to take 5th position, I ended up 3rd in the elite small final.
Sunday takes a different race format for the elite and seniors, where the 2 class merge into one. After the timed qualification runs, the brackets were drawn and there was myself and Dave Roberts in the same round. With nervous silence we got on the gate, when the gate dropped it was Pat Campbell-Jenner who got out in front. I was right on his tail looking for a gap that could see both of us through, but it never happened so unfortunately that was Dave out. My day ended at the quarter final round trying to avoid the falling P.C.J. As for Scott he was looking fast, once again sailed through his moto's and come semi final time where wasn't any mistakes this time as he booked his place in the A-final. With the top 4 juniors in the country battling hard, Scott stayed hot on the heels of the new European junior downhill champion Bernard Kerr and had pop at him in the last turn but Kerr held his line to take the win and Scott in the silver medal position.
Congratulations to Katie Ratcliff for her 3rd place in the Women's class aboard her Flow Myth

Dave Richardson

JUME 09
SKINNY PEOPLE DONT BOUNCE

Me, Beth and the locals were at Redhill for the weekend, camping for lewis' birthday. Riding on the saturday was great, a nice cool evening with a small session before a barbeque to end the night. Neil (redhill owner and track builder legend) had the barbeque lit and the food and drinks were flowing. That was saturday.

Sunday morning everyone wanted to get a few runs in before the sun got too strong, so we all got our bikes and started taking runs down the newly crafted 4x track. A few runs in it happened. Coming into the step-down, before the huge triple, i landed a bit squirly and had my weight over the front of the bike. I went
to grab the brake but it was out of my reach. It all happened very quickly, but as soon as i took off the triple, i ditched the bike and flew through the air, probably around 10ft up in the air. I can remember thinking, this is a long way down! I came down on top of the lander flat on my left foot, which took the full impact. From
there i carried on down past the lander onto my side and wrist.

A trip to the hospital was organised, with beth coming to my rescue and sorting out lifts etc. What an angel. By this point my foot had started swelling quite bad and the pain was pretty bad. Sunday drivers on the road didnt help, but we got there and was seen pretty quickly. With many doctors taking a look, and x-rays being
taken. They admitted me into hospital, with a fractured heal and possible fractured scaphoid bone in my hand. They couldnt tell for sure how bad the break was so arranged for a ct scan. A huge donut shaped machine that took a 3D image of my foot. The results showed 2 bones broken in my foot, one being a small piece off my heal and another slightly above it on a seperate bone. They couldnt operate on it as the pieces were too small or crushed to pin. Many x-rays were taken of my wrist but still were'nt sure if it was broken again, since i've done it once before! I'll find out next week.

Im home now, with a cast for 4 weeks, then the possibility of another cast after that. A huge thanks to everyone at redhill for helping me off the track and into my car. An even bigger thanks to lewis who drove me to the hospital, and Beth whos helped me loads everyday. I'll see you on the track soon.

May 2009

NPS 4X Rounds 2 & 3

Rounds 2 and 3 of the National 4x series were held at The Edge adventure centre in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. For those of you who have never visited the place, this track provides some of the best racing of the season. Yes, its not the most technical track out there, however the big wide open turns offer loads of options to make passes. It is open most weekends to ride just check www.theedgeadventure.co.uk for more info on that.

It was a mixed weekend for the Flow team. I managed to destroy most of the front end of my bike, as well as giving my back and kidneys a big whack so that put me out of the action. Scott Roberts was also having a troubled weekend, he was carrying a foot injury from Andorra, he still managed some great racing through his moto's despite talking a big tumble in his 2nd moto, but just missed out on a top 2 finish in the semi finals. Dave Roberts was looking very composed all weekend, finishing with a 4th place overall on Sunday. Top man was Gethin, who took 3rd place on Saturday in very tough senior class.


Next stop will be the 4th round of the Nissan World Cup series in Fort William which is in 2 weeks time, you can see the action live on www.freecaster.tv

Dave Richardson

June 2008

Tom Gethin - Shitbags Jam

shitbags jamLast weekend was a good one, one of the few i get off work, so i made the most of it. Saturday i met a broken Tom Dowie (broken heel) at chicksands for some needed 4x practice before next weekends 3rd round of NPS. Dowie in wheelchair made for some laughs as i pushed him down the 4x track. His bit of adrenaline out of the way, i found some good lines for the racing. Drifting round the new open last corner and over the step-up triple. So with that done, me and Dowie set about finding some Kopparberg and kettle chips! Sunday i've got a call off paton at some ridiculous time in the morning to say no trails today. Dissapointed i fall back asleep and get woken again by paton, 'theyre fine, trails are on'.Great! So i get on my way to meet him, gettin through Reading is a nightmare to say the least. I find him at the Caversham ghetto park, and he's airing real nice out of this 6ft quarter. He got some real nice twists over the spine, which was pretty small! We had a good laugh there and made our way to paul's (shitbags) trails. They started on this ghetto pallet roll-in, over a pump into the first hip-double. Then it follows onto 3 much larger doubles, which were so smooth and flowy. Me and Paton sessioned these for the rest of the afternoon, doing trains and gettin some nice 'tweaker' moves on the go!

So thanks to paul for letting me ride there, and to Paton for inviting me. A few pics should be up soon. Until
next time...

Click Picture for bigger veiw.....

May 2008 Uk 4X national champs

report by Dave Richardson

Sunday 18th was the National 4x championships held at The Edge, Bridgnorth. The track was altered today with the addition of a new lower section, traversing across the mountain board freeride jumps, followed by a flat grass turn to encourage the last gasp dive up the inside. For myself and Dave Roberts there was a change of format from normal nps races, we had a timed qualifying run which gave us our seeding position for the knockout rounds. I made it through to the quarter finals, where I over jumped a table top then slipped a pedal as I hit the next double and lost control. As for Dave Roberts, after a much improved saturday he struggled in a tough 1/8 round and miss out on the quarters. However Scott and Suzanne bought home some medals, both claiming bronze medals their categories after some racing. So on that note I want to congratulate the two of them on behalf of everyone at Flow.

click picture for larger view

May 2008

Sam Johnston - back from the underground

After what seems likie far too long Sam has come out of hidding and was snapped at Woburn by a local guy called James Webber who has been kind enough to send us the pictures you see here. Many thanks James lets hope Sam's is back in action alot more this summer.

April 2008

Daves NPS round 1 report

National 4x Series Round 1 – Chicksands

Sunday 20th April saw the start of the new 4x season, Chicksands is always a great place to race and with around 200 entries it was the biggest 4x event for quite a while. Racing across all categories was superb, arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder all the way down the track. The flow team seemed to pick up from where we left off last season. Scott was justifying his inclusion in the GB junior development team for some World Cup experience this year by reeling off 4 wins on his way to an excellent 2nd place. Dave Roberts was looking nice and smooth with some good lines, but just missed the cut in a tuff senior class. One man who did stamp his name on the senior class was Tom Gethin, he was making some excellent gates and made it through to his 1st national A-final, where he ended up a creditable 4th. Suzanne was enjoying herself, actually racing against the girls instead of the lads. She was battling hard all day with Charlie Phillips, who was formally a top european bmx challenger. They did battle again in the A final, with Suzanne just missing out on the win by a small margin. As for me, I was stoked to make the semi final in my 1st elite race, but couldn't make an impact in my semi with Scott Beaumont and Martin Ogden edging me out of a place in the final.

March 2008

Daves 4X Team update

New Sponsors

After a very successful 2007 4x season, Flow Bikes are continuing to put out a strong team for 2008, aiming to hold onto the national team title. We will be running with 4 riders this year, Dave Richardson, Dave Roberts, Scott Roberts and Suzanne Lacey.

The team will again be riding the Myth frame, which has proved its race pedigree over the last few years. Marzocchi will be supplying the suspension technology, with the New and improved 4x World Cup fork. Magura have also come on board, by supplying the team with their new Louise brakes, containing the 'ventidisc' system which improves ventilation by 15%. Providing us with body armour for this year will be Forcefield. Forcefield Body Armour is unique in that it specialises in Soft Armour that offers unrivalled protection and comfort. For more information go to www.forcefieldbodyarmour.co.uk. The 4x Team will also be supported by Flyracing and will be wearing there full race kit for 2008, check out there site www.flyracing.com colour is not finalised but it looks like it might be the blue kinetic.

August 2007

Daves NPS round 6 report

National 4x Series Round 6 –Redhill Extreme


Saturday was the National Championships and for this one-off event myself and Suzanne were racing against some different opposition, I was mixed in with the pro's, while Suzanne was entered in the senior womens class, even
though she has 4 years to go in the junior ranks. My timed run was ok, it was a little messy and ended up in 15th but hey, 0.2 seconds behind Dale Holmes aint bad. I got through a tough first round by passing DMR's Duncan Ferris in the last turn. Quarter final round is where it ended for me, after getting a good gate I managed to get across from lane 4 into 2nd position, only to get hit from behind which destroyed my rear brake caliper. Scott Roberts was looking odds on for the title in the Youth class, he won every moto, but his hopes were shattered by a 3-man crash in the final, which saw him go down hard so he had to settle for 4th place. Then came Suzanne, she had a great race and took the silver medal after trading places several times with Kim Bent. Sunday, Round 6 of the NPS series. Suzanne was back in with the lads today, after a couple of crashes in her moto's, she was put into a run-off where she narrowly missed the cut for the main. However she won the B-final. Scott came out with fighting style today, and basically hammered the entire Youth Category, with a clean sweep 4 moto wins aswell as winning his semi and A-final. I also had a good day with a 2nd and 3 wins from my 4 moto's, I managed to win both my quarter and semi finals. The A-final was stacked and anyone could take the win, Lee White had gone unbeaten in the moto's so had 1st gate pick - he took gate 2 so I went for the inside. The start went well for me and I got into the lead, into the 2nd turn White made a move on me and went down, this enabled me to extend my lead and take the win.

I've spoke to all the riders and they want to stay on board for next year, which im really happy with, after chatting with Tony im going to add Scott's older brother- Dave into the team next year, he will race in the senior class as i will be moving to elite!

June 2007

Daves NPS round 5 report

National 4x Series Round 5 – Fort William.

This round was scheduled to be at the NASS event, but with the amount of rain that has fallen over the past few weeks it was going to be very hard to build a fresh track. So with very short notice NPS4X.com had to think quickly, came up with this downhill BMX track.

For this weekend we had the full compliment of riders in the Flow Bikes team, Scott Roberts, Suzanne Lacey and myself. In the qualifing moto’s we all went well, me and Scott both had 3 wins and a 2nd place to push them into the semi finals, however for Suzanne she missed the cut for the A-final by 1 point [remember she races against the boys!]. Scott had a great semi final and won that, while I had to battle from 3rd place in the last turn to qualify for the A-Final. In Scott’s final he came out of gate 2 well, but got boxed in by 2 other riders in the 1st turn and lost some of his speed. He battled hard and reeled them in down the final straight, but was unable to pass them and finished 3rd


My final went better than expected, off gate 2 I had a great start and managed to pull clear, while the other 3 riders raced between themselves for the other podium positions.

After 5 rounds, the team standings are looking really healthy. Flow Bikes on a total of 516 points, with our nearest competition on 386 points.