Video Edit Ryan Nangle
Photo's James Wyatt & Izzy Wagstaff
Words Cliff Barbeary
For the last 3 years Si Paton has let the Dirt Wars UK Family take over the MAlverns Classic Main Arena and become the main event at the Festival. With The GT Malverns Classic Being the biggest MTB Festival in the UK the crowds are always massive and on top form. Not only do we have the jumps at the festival , it also hosts a whole range of MTB races, Activities (Air Bag and Pumptrack) and all round fun over the 3 days. Massive trade stalls line the arena where you can go and grab a show bargain or just chat to the guy's from the different brands that all attend the weekend. they even hosted the 4X National Champs there this year which I've been told over 10,000 times that event owner Si Paton took the win in the over 70's Class, Well Done Mate.....
To get an invite to the Malverns round of DWUK you must first ride at least 2 of the previous rounds before the festival, this is to ensure us that you are capable of riding the Malverns course. This year we added a few WildCards after putting out a competition on Instagram so that we could spice things up a little and bring in two new riders to the series. Both Morgan Pickstock and Malachai Epapara managed to impress us with the edits they sent over and bagged themselves the WildCards. Just a few days before the event 2 riders went out to injury so we saw an awesome oppertunity to add 2 female riders to the line up after both Alice Smith and Fionn Pickstocks mum had contacted us about riding at the Malverns. Unfortunatley when they first contacted me there were no spaces available but after 2 came up the girls snapped at the chance and took up our offer.
This was the best festival yet for DWUK as we had both Male and Female riders on course and little Fi Pickstock was out to show she had what it takes to mix it up with the lads as she was the first Female rider to hit the new drop on course (Higher and bigger gap than 2022).
Friday saw practice day and we were really lucky with the weather as it had been gusting really bad through the course through out the week, with 30 mph gusts from Monday to Thursday we were starting to get a bit worried that we would not be able to run over the weekend as we have to think about rider safety first every time.
As the riders took to the course the wind dropped off and full sends started to go down.
Saturday was no different as the wind seemed to stay away when we needed it to and the riders hit the course for their qualifying runs to see who would be going through to the sunday final for Open Riders and Saturday night finals for the Pro/Elite riders.
Unfortnatley one of our smallest riders young George Keen took a nasty slam after overrotating a backflip on the first which aquired medical attention which took a while as we though George may have broke his coxix bone. Luckily George was all good but had to sit out the rest of the event due to a sore butt. We then had a slight delay with rain which left us no time to run the Pro/Elite quallies that afternoon so we had to run the Pro quallies that night instead of their final. This ment that the Pro/Elite final would now take place on the Sunday afternoon straigh after the Open/AM final.
The Pro/Elite riders really pulled out all the stops to ensure they had made it through to the top 10 for the final and the crowd were so loud it was totally insane. Double Backflips, tripple trucks, Flat Flip drop attempt from Jordan Clark (gutted he missed the pop but came out uninjured), Double Tailwhips, Cashrolls and frontie tucks were all chucked in to gain the points and impress the crowds.
