Gbduro21 - day 11.0

The show must gone as they say. That was some day yesterday! Glorious weather, incredible scenery and riders who have or are still running themselves inside out to reach John O’Groats.

For some of the pack they were setting off for the final push to John O’Groats whereas we had our remaining riders cross the border into Scotland ready for the final stretch North.

The elephant in the room has to be mentioned. Having reviewed the situation, it pains us that we had to DQ Angus for using the dotwatcher’s bike kindly offered to him.

The formal stance we felt we had to adopt to maintain the integrity of the event is that self-supported riding is about getting yourself/your kit to the finish and riders must not gain advantage as a result of the event taking place. 

It is for this reason we have had to DQ Angus Young for using a dotwatcher’s bike after he experienced a catastrophic mechanical. 

To have avoided using ‘outside assistance’ Angus should have detoured to make use of a commercial service i.e. one that was available to all riders, regardless of whether the event was taking place or not. 

It goes without saying that this should not detract from Angus’ exceptional performance during the entire event. We have no doubt he’ll be back hungrier than ever!

Through the small hours and early morning we had more riders join Angus in John O’Groats. Ollie rolled in followed by Jaimi, Chris then Mark.

Not long after Mark, we had Philippa and Alice roll in at the same time closely followed by Carl.

Just awaiting some times to come through at the time of writing so will update you later on today.

A huge congratulations to Mark Beaumont who officially becomes the first rider home after an equally impressive ride considering its his first ‘bunch event…’ I reckon his solo endeavours are not a bad skill set to transfer over to this bikepacking malarkey. It’s maybe not the way he would would have liked it to pan out but you can only ride what is on front of you.

Will update later after work!

Cheers
DP