Matt Adair took U23 gold and was 6th in the elite field, but he had hoped for more on Sunday (Photo: Sean Rowe)
Despite having finished sixth in the elite race and picking up the U23 title, Matt Adair wasn’t totally happy with his ride at the National Cyclocross Championships in Belfast on Sunday.
“I’m happy with the U23 win but I’m not entirely happy with the overall result,” said the XMTB-McConvey Cycles rider afterwards.
“The race started off well. I was in the top five, felt strong enough, but when it started raining and the mud got worse I had a few big falls. But I think early everybody fell in those conditions.
“You were very lucky if you stayed on. I would have liked to have been placed higher but I’m not the best in mud and once the rain came on and it started to get muddy I lost more positions in the last half of the race.”
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Indeed if the race had gone on another few metres, Adair would have been beaten into sixth by a fast finishing Ronan McLaughlin of Dig Deep-Inspired Cycling, who caught him just on the line.
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Adair will now focus on cross-country mountain biking for the rest of the season and may even have a go at the European marathon MTB championships in Ballyhoura in the summer.
“The main focus is going to be the mountain biking,” he said.
“I’ll go over to England and do some races with the XMTB development team and try and get a few top 20s. To do mountain biking and road is a bit too hard to do both at a high level.
“I might go down and do the marathon championships but it’s a completely different thing to cross-country racing. To be able to do 60 miles off road you need some serious training for it but I’ll give it a go.”
It was a battle to stay upright on Sunday, especially as the mud thickened in Lady Dixon Park, Belfast. But Adair was one of relatively few riders to keep it together (Photo: Toby Watson)
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