Just Ride Your Bike - Competition Winners

Earlier this year, I was contacted by Glyn O'Brien.  Him and his wife Catherine organise the Vitus First Tracks Enduro, a new race series with 4 stages set across the finest trails that Ireland has to offer.  We were invited to take part in a video competition that was being held at the second stage of the Enduro series.

I jumped at the chance to take part, it gave us a chance to try and showcase the trails here and some of the local talent that we have in the group.  I put it out there for everyone to have some input into the video, we didn't really have any brief as such so there were some weird and wonderful ideas put out there!  By the power of the internet we were contacted by Ryan Loney, he runs BNL Productions.  He had come across a post that someone had put on Reddit asking for film ideas for us.  Bursting to get into the MTB video making business, Ryan volunteered his services.

We started our filming days and soon discovered that we had a pretty major talent in the group.  Nathan McComb is an up and coming rider who has been making some waves in the Enduro circuits recently.  He was more than happy to provide the video with some extra special tricks and skills!  Remember the name, he's going to be big!

We had 3 main filming days, along with a few extra sessions to get the little extras we needed.  Then the guys at BNL Productions worked their magic, combining top notch editing with the perfect soundtrack.  The finished product was so far above my original expectations, it's without doubt one of the best mountain bike videos to come out of Northern Ireland!

The competition all kicked off on a Saturday night in the amazing Narrow Water Castle in Warrenpoint.  The second stage of the series was being held on the Sunday in Bigwood, not far from our premier trail centre in Rostrevor.  We waited nervously for all the other videos to be shown, ours was last in the lineup.  Some stiff competition came up on the big screen, lots of skills on display and lots of laugh out loud moments from the other teams and groups that took part.  The reaction our video got from the audience at it played made the waiting worthwhile though!  Then the votes were counted and we were able to relax as our names were read out in first place.

Sit back and enjoy it, you're going to want to visit our wee country after this....

(Credit to Ryan Loney, Paddy O'Kane, Jason Joy for production and editing.

Riders - Nathan McComb, Ryan Shaw, Archie Axton, Darryl Aston, Lee Sofley, Frazer Morrison, Aaron Lee and all the guys from Just Ride Your Bike NI)