King of Dirt blog – Rory Hackett

Published on May 8, 2009

King of Dirt – Portreath – 09

After a 6 – hour drive from Guildford to Cornwall I was hugely grateful of a bed to sleep in at Tim’s flat. I went to bed nervous, but thankfully too exhausted to let it keep me awake all night. Saturday arrived and we were all up early for a fry-up breakfast courtesy of master chef Kech Williams! A half-hour drive through the rolling Cornish countryside got us to ‘The Track’. Even at 10 am the car park was already overflowing and the place was buzzing. As it was my first visit to Portreath I was blown away by the sheer amount of lines and features squeezed into an area the size of a large field. We padded up and went up to check out the start of the dirt line, teeming with riders dialling in their lines. Ryan was already hard at work on the small line, looking smooth as ever.

I got to work riding the technical smaller lines and started to wish that I’d taken the sat-nav with me! We practiced for the rest of the day, and I struggled to get the entire line down, a few weird jumps in the top section were putting many of us off, one in particular resulted in a K.O. for Jim Davage and a nasty dislocated and snapped ankle for James Ioannou (get well soon mate!). Ryan and I had an awesome session in the pit and resi-ramp, with Ryan working on superflips and no handed flips, while I tried to dial in my no foot cans and barrel rolls/ cork flips.

By the time the elite comp came around at 5 pm I was exhausted, a mistake which I will try not to make again. As the wind started to pick up there was some grumbling around the pack of riders, many of whom seemed less than stoked on the imminent competition. However this was blown out of the window as all of the riders started putting down their runs.
Then my name was announced and it was go time! I dropped in and realized to my horror that I could barely hold onto my bars due to arm-pump and a sprained wrist. If anything this helped me though, I was forced to relax and breezed through a line that had been giving me problems all day. I did basic tables, kickouts and X ups most of the way down the line then threw a flip off the last step-up. A slight case was too much for my hands to take and I cheese-grated my way down the landing.

My other two runs were nothing special; my back was stinging like a bitch as I flowed through the line. A small no foot can followed by a nice wallride with a little table out ended my day on a relatively positive note.
The highlight of my day however was watching all of my mates absolutely slay the course. Tim dropped in and put together an amazing run which included a superman to no-foot-can (in one jump) and the biggest superman seatgrab I’ve ever witnessed in person. Ryan laid down his trademark smooth style and a completely sideways cork-flip (see Tom Grundy’s picture).

As you all probably know by now the day belonged to Sam Reynolds, who threw down a succession of potentially winning runs as well as a final run that included a massive frontflip and an almost-landed 720. He followed up his dirt win with another in the slopestyle, to bring his tally to three after his 4X win earlier in the day.

Big thanks to Cliff and Bret who supported us amazingly throughout the day and delivered us all sorts of new Fox goodies! The same goes to all of the sponsors who have sorted us out with amazing bikes for the season.