Team BikeRadar’s Neil Donoghue at the British National Championships

Neil in action on the Llangynog course (BikeRadar)

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I always look forward to the National Championships. Britain has a lot of great riders so it is a really good title to have. Going to Llangynog I knew the track would suit me and it is fun to ride. Practice went really well for me and I was having loads of fun- which is usually a sign that I am going fast.

I had a line through a tight set of trees in the woods that it seemed no one else was doing and I knew it was making me time. During one practice run I went down and there was a photographer knelt in between the trees- I guess he hadn’t see anyone do it. I gave him a shout and just buzzed over his shoulder almost knocking his camera out of his hand, pretty funny.

I put in a solid run in seeding on Saturday, nothing too special, it put me in fourth which I was quite happy with. The track was really slick on Saturday morning but it had been drying all day and when we got to practice on Sunday morning it was nice and dry and getting fast so I knew we would be going quite a few seconds quicker than the seeding times.

The race went pretty good for me, I made a mistake up near the start and lost a lot of momentum for a long straight, I thought I had thrown it away so I threw caution to the wind in the woods and I managed to pull out a pretty good time.

When I was pedalling into the finish I really had no idea if my run had been good. It was nice to go into the hot seat with only Marc, Steve [Peat] and Gee [Atherton] to go. I ended up in third which I was really happy with and completed a full Santa Cruz podium. 

Here's a helmet camera video of the downhill run:

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