World Cup round 7 - Hafjell , Norway

I say this every year but no sooner has the season started its already come to an end. It felt like only a month ago I was setting foot on to a plane heading for South Africa excited to race with a new team behind me, a new bike and good winter’s training under my belt. Since then 7 World Cup rounds and a handful of UK nations and other events  and now only one race left. The BDS final at Llangollen, Wales this weekend. So it is not all done yet!

I have just got back from the airport from a great trip to the Hafjell bike park in Norway. This is my first trip to Norway and what a beautiful place it is. It’s a sparsely populated country which makes for fantastic landscapes of mountains, lakes and rivers everywhere you turn.

This was a new track to me and most people. It had been used for the European championships a few years ago. My first impressions after walking the track were that it looked awesome and was going to be such a fun track to ride. It had a great mix of sections and had pretty much every sort of section that you could have on a downhill track on it. It was a awesome track to practise with all the jumps and high speed sections not to mention the 70 KPH field section in the middle.

For my qualifying run I went it with the approach of a clean fast run was what I needed to do. I felt like I made a few mistakes in my run and didn’t carry speed as well as I would have liked to through some sections. Despite that, I qualified in 50^th position, enough for the final. I walked the track and found a few great lines and was excited for the finals. My race run was clean but I didn’t feel like I attached enough. I ended up 53^rd on the day. This result along with a very consistent year put me 56^th overall in the series which I’m really happy with as one of my big goals was to be constant and finished in the top 80 ready for next year.

So only one more race left and that’s it for the 2012 season. Now, I’m heading off for Llangollen and the final round of the BDS series.

Here is a helmet cam from one of the other track in the bike park that we road after the race.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoeYK6_NSoE&list=UUtmP2_EQIZkrlt7ly1PJSXQ&index=1&feature=plcp

I have attached a few photos from the race as well.

Fort William World Cup 2012

Last weekend was round three of the 2012 World Cup series at Fort William in Scotland. This is my third visit to the venue for World Cup competition and I was excited and nervous. I really like Fort William as a venue and a track. It gets the biggest crowds of any World Cup races and had over 30000 visitor tickets sold this year.

I really enjoyed practise on the track. I was dry for Friday and Saturday and the track was running supper fast and rough. I had a great qualifying run and came down with a 4.49.084. This put me in to 49^th place. I was so happy to have such a good result in qualifying and was excited to be riding in Sundays final.

Rain over night was pretty exciting as I love riding in the wet. The rain dose weird things to the track in Scotland. It makes some parts of the track grippy and some more slippery. One thing for sure is that the muddy woods section is very slippery!

Unfortunately I had a mechanical in my race run and lost my chain about a third of the way down so had to role the whole of the bottom section. I finished 55^th with is a great result for me with no chain. I have now moved up to 49^th in the overall World Cup rankings.

Great start to the UK BDS series

Even with one World Cup already done this year it still doesn’t feel long since the last round of the 2011 series. For this year Si from the British Downhill series has added another round making it a 6 round race series and with a new venue in as well which would be the setting for the opening race of the season. It’s great to have a new venue, Combe Syhenham was an old national track from a few years back, I have never been there before and after having a walk of the track on Friday I was very excited to ride it. It looked like it had a great mix of section to it and kind of reminded me of the Pietermaritzburg WC track. Of the start was a couple of cool rooty bus stops before some flowy switch backing turns leading you in to a open jumpy field section before a cool technical and rocky woods section to the finish.

After a bit of rain on Friday night the track started off quite wet and slippery with a lot of riders riding spike. I have moved over to Schwelbe tyres for this year and have been getting on with them really well. I played about during practise with the Dirty Dan and Muddy Mary and found both tyres working great but went for Muddy Marys as the track was rapidly drying out as come Sunday morning we had blue sky’s and sunshine.

After seeding I was sitting in 11^th place with a solid and clean run. In my race run I put another 2 seconds in to my seeding time which was happy with and finished 15^th. I’m really happy with a great solid start to the year and looking forward to Round 2 in Fort William, Scotland in 4 weeks time.

Here's a run down the track from Sunday morning practise with DriftHD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLhHMw-Hm60&list=UUtmP2_EQIZkrlt7ly1PJSXQ&index=1&feature=plcp

Big thanks to Norco, Fetish Bike Co, One Industries, Gamut, Adidas Eyewear, Kore, DriftHD, Sun Ringle, 661, Schwalbe and Sram.

WC Round 1, Pietermaritzburg South Africa

WC Round 1, Pietermaritzburg South Africa

Round 1 of this year’s UCI World Cup series was held in beautiful surrounding mountains of the city of Pietermaritzburg. This with my first time to Africa and I was really excited to be back racing. I was coming into the race confident with a new bike and lots of new sponsor and all the training I had don’t over the winter but was also feeling nervous to if had done enough training and the right type as well.

My first impressions of the track that it looked supper fast the whole way. The top section looked supper fun with some nice turns and jumps. It then shoots you out in to the gully were you can get 60K an hour down in to three big jumps which I was spinning out for in last gear with a 39t chain ring on. The track would be very physically hard because if the pedalling sections but really fun as well.

Practise went really well. I felt fast on the track and got all my lines sorted ready for qualification. We had a bit of rain during the night which made the track a bit slick for practise but with the 25C plus temperatures it soon dried out again. I had a good qualification run and can down in 48th position. I had a goal for this race to get things going with a top 50 finish and after my qualifying run I knew I was on track.

We had an extra day of practise on Saturday and this is always my favourite day as qualification is out the way and the race isn’t till tomorrow so its supper relaxed and fun. We also have the afternoon off so we look this opportunity to test out the hire car a bit.

The night before the race brought so more rain and this time it was really heavy. It was hard to tell if the track would stay wet as practise was a bit slick but sure enough it pretty much completely dried out come race run time. My race run went really well, I had a great top section and got the big table perfect giving my good speed in to the peddle section with I gave it everything I had. I can over the line more than 2 seconds up and I was supper happy as I had had at least achieved my goal for the race. I ended up finish 27th in the end which was the 6th fastest British rider. I’m supper happy to get such a great result at the start of the year and I’m looking forward two round 2 in Val di Sole Italy in a couple of month’s time.

Winter training in Spain.

Spain training trip to Malaga.

During the month of Febuary I was lucky enough to be able to go to Malaga in Spain for nearly a month to help get ready for the fast aproching World Cup season that starts next week in South Africa. I went to Spain alongside Matt, Joe and Matti for Team CRC and also Rob Smith and Perry Gardener. After a long drive and a very long very crossing we arived at out villa greeted by this sun set.

Here is our awesome villa. This thing sleeps 10 with loads of space and it was perfect for three weeks for training. If you’re interested in staying at this great place please go to http://www.stunningvillalucia.com/

I wasted no time and headed straight out for a ride on my new Norco Sight. I got the bike just before I came away but didn’t get time to ride it before I came away so its madden voyage was to be on the rocky, dusty tracks of the Spanish mountains. Perfect terrain to test out the bike and my new Sun Ringle Black Flag wheels. After a nice hour and half’s climb Joe and I arrived at the top, ready to hit the 15 minute downhill track back to the town. It was a clear day so we could see the Strait of Gibraltar in the background.

Nigle Page (Team CRC manager) and Michael for CRC came out for a week’s riding and to see how the guys where getting on. Dinner time was a big thing as there was always a lot of hungry mouths to feed.

The newly named “Gingers” track was a very popular track to ride. Fast loose and rough, it was a great track for setting bikes up. I was really starting to feel great on my Norco Aurum and getting her set up perfectly.

We were lucky enough to be able to use the CRC Vito for uplifting and it made for a quick turnaround with the 3.0 liter V6 under the hood.

One of the best step-up’s jumps I have ever ridden. The jump is at the bottom of the Dusty Valley track and Punchers Paradise (didn’t live up to its name this trip) and is a joy to jump after riding 3 minutes of rough gnarly rocky track before you get to this point. Here is a video of me and Joe riding the (Very) "Dusty Valley" track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAdmFbsRKns

Such a great trip. Big thanks to Salva at The Bike Shuttle for sorting us with a gym, taking us to all the tracks and uplifting as well. Check them out for the best Mountain Biking experience in southern Spain. http://www.thebikeshuttle.com/

Chilly start to racing!

It has only been about a month since I made the announcement of my change over to Norco bikes for this coming 2012 season. I have had my new Aurum downhill bike for about three weeks now. I have tried to get out on it as much as possible since it arrived and I have found that I got used to it very quickly. So much so, that I felt good enough to head down to the Forest of Dean for one of their winter races.

FOD is a great little venue, the tracks are relatively short only being about a minute long and are all great fun to ride. I went down on the Saturday to do a few runs on the track as I knew that the race was fully booked and there would be a good three hundred riders trying to get down come Sunday morning so Saturday was the best time to get used to the track. I did about five or six runs and felt comfortable on the bike and track.

Sunday morning was a cold one with temperatures only just making it in to the plus figures. Practice was very busy in the morning with a lot of riders out. I managed to get a good couple of runs in and got everything on the track dialled down ready for race runs.

There had been a lot of talk of rain over the weekend so wanted to put in a fast first run just in case the heavens opened between first and second runs. I got a low 57 in my first run giving me a 1.5 second lead over second place which I was pretty happy with. Second runs came around and still no rain so I decided I needed to put in another fast one as I thought that the track might be running faster. I came down 0.3 slower than my first run but I think this was because I was a little hesitant in the lower part of the track because it was getting dark.

Despite being slower on the second run I still took the win in Pro-Am and the race overall winner as well. I was really happy to get a win this early in the season on my new Norco and this has set me up for a great season to come.

Thanks to Norco Bike, One Industries, 661, Adidas, Kore, Sun Ringle, Maxxis, SRAM, Action Cameras

"Welcome to Norco"

After months of emailing and CV sending I'm happy to announce that I will be riding Norco frames for the 2012 season.

Hear is the official Norco press release.

"Olie Burton is a solo competitor on the World Cup circuit. As a privateer he has been making his own way to the races and fighting his way up through the ranks. This coming year he will be riding a Norco Aurum in all his racing endeavors. Olie is still on his own program riding for sponsors such as Kore, One Industries, 661, Adidas and Action Cameras but this year he has the power of the Aurum on his side.

In 2011 Olie injured his finger and was forced off the bike for three months. Disappointed, he struggled coming back and missed qualifying at a few of the World Cup rounds. As 2011 progressed he recovered and came back to finish in an impressive 68^thand 66^th at Mont Saint Anne and Windham and 62^nd at the world cup finals in Val Di Sole. These results were a great step forward and he is looking to improve upon them in 2012.

Some other highlights from this past year have been 4^th place at the Nissan European Cup in La Bresse, France and winning the overall Elite title for the Pearce Cycles race series. The Pearce Cycles series was a specific goal Olie had set for 2011 and hopes to continue through 2012.

Everyone at Norco would like to wish Olie a warm welcome to the team and offer the best support we can over the coming year. Here is to a great 2012! If you would like to send a message, you can connect with Olie on his facebook page."