Monty heads to the home of Cyclocross

Vitus Bikes / Chain Reaction Cycles rider David Montgomery (Monty) is spending the start of his “off-season” taking a few dirty weekends in Belgium. Wearing his distinctive Irish National kit, CX Champion Mongomery has been offered the chance to race some of the UCI World Cup rounds over the coming months thanks to support from sponsors CRC/Vitus Bikes, Cycling Ireland and The Belgian Project. We’ll be following the Banbridge man over the coming weeks as he tackles some of the most iconic CX races on the planet.

The first installment from the Vitus Bikes supported National Champ comes fresh from his race at the Ardooie UCI race yesterday

A class day out at Ardooie UCI race, first race in my Belgium trip. It was nice and dry all morning, and I was feeling good in practice. It’s not a particularly technical course but it is super fast! In typical fashinon .. just as race time came in the afternoon the rain came on! This of course completely changed the track as it became super greasy mud over hard-pack.

I had a good start, feeling comfortable mixing it in top 20 with no stress, leave catching Sven and the boys for a few laps yet. It was only a matter of time for the carnage to begin and within a few moments a lad and I came together on a mad slippy fast corner = wipe out! All was not lost and I came out not so bad, stopping to re-position hoods. I got back on quick but my bars were mad twisted so had to stop again. This took a bit longer than I’d of liked the result of which was a drop back to last by that stage. All on my own I rode hard to catch the back of the field as I started to get back onto it.

I was really enjoying the race now and as I approached a super muddy rutted fast corner I commit to the rut, got a little cross rutted at a good 20mph and rode straight sideways into a fence post! Bike stopped “tout sweet” resulting in me face planting the ground so hard the spectators tried to keep me down thinking I was concussed! All good, pretty refreshing in some respect but it did take some time to persuede the gathered crowd to give me my bike back. Things weren’t looking good for the win at that stage.

I got pulled out at the end of the lap, watched my car park neighbour Meeusen take the win and packed my bags. 36th out of 46 starters. Scalped Michael Vanthourenout and Rob Peeters anyway.

As unreal day out thanks so much to dreamteam Martine Verfaillie, Hanne Wullaert & her husband Wim. Thanks lots to everyone there for the support too, heard my name a few times! Maybe racing again on Saturday, but if not then for sure Tuesday in Woerden.

Our thanks to The Belgian Project for assisting Monty with racing in Belgium this winter