Burley rider has great comeback (From Ilkley Gazette)

Top Brit Scott gets world call

12:00pm Thursday 6th August 2009 in Sport By Rachel O'Connor

Burley-in-Wharfedale’s Scott Thwaites won the British MTB Championship held on a tough ‘old school’ course at Innerleithen, Scotland, which included a series of severe climbs and treacherous descents.

Returning to mountain biking after two seasons away from the sport, and with only a handful of races under his belt, the 19-year-old rider faced a strong field in the under-23 event, which contained four current or former full-time Olympic Academy riders.

These included World Championship bronze medallist David Fletcher.

Leeds Carnegie University student Thwaites, riding for Crosstrax, began steadily as Welshman Anthony O’Boyle raced into an early lead, closely followed by Fletcher. By the end of lap two, Fletcher had joined ranks with O’Boyle, leaving Thwaites 16 seconds behind.

At the end of lap three, it was Fletcher sitting pretty, 100 metres ahead of Thwaites, with O’Boyle in third and starting to suffer for his fast start.

On the final ascent, with the race an hour and three-quarters old, Fletcher made several strong efforts to rid himself of Thwaites, who had now clawed back the deficit, but this was unsuccessful.

Then it was Thwaites’ turn to attack and this time he was successful. Hitting the final descent in control of the race, he surged on, with Fletcher coming home just under two minutes later to pick up second, while O’Boyle narrowly held on to third, some six minutes adrift.

Commenting after the race, Thwaites said: “I’m over the moon with that result. It was a high-quality field with some very good riders. I’ve just been riding road really, mainly the Elite city centre criteriums as I’ve just signed for Madison. I enjoyed the course, which was a real mountain-bike test, proper hills and steep technical descents.”

Following the event, Thwaites was selected to represent Great Britain at the World Championships in Canberra, Australia, in early September. In preparation, the British team are undertaking a week’s training in the Peak District before travelling to France for a week-long international stage race against teams from France, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Spain, Russia and Chile.

The team will then spend three weeks training and racing in Australia.