Noel Hanna wins at the ‘Beast of the East’

Rob / 10.06.2002

‘Fresh’ from his win at Adrenalin Rush, Noel Hanna was on the podium again at the end of the recent Beast of The East in Canada. He was first in Ireland as part of team Omniglow Lythgoe, then flew straight off for ‘The Beast’, where he was competing with Dale Blankenship in the pairs category as ‘Team Bridgedale’.

They were among 23 teams taking on a 250 course set by Mtb Pro rider Chris Scott, and he threw in some highly technical bike stages, a few spectacular rope stages in Shenandoah mountains and some interesting tactical choices. The most critical was where teams had to decide whether to complete 2 mountainous orienteering stages, or take 6 and 3 hour penalties respectively. They had to judge how long the orienteering would take, and what it would take out of them, and as it was night time Noel and Dale opted for the penalties. Most of the leaders took the same choice, with the exception of Mountaintouring.com, who got lost and lost out.

Bridgedale may have been a pair, but for the later stages of the race they were effectively a threesome, as they joined up with ‘soloist’ Ronnie Angell – a man who has a reputation for mowing down dogs on his mountain bike. Ronnie had said the voices in his head would keep him company, but he ended up with Noel and Dale instead, and they did pretty well.

They lost out by 14 minutes to Team Adventure Pocono on a mountain bike race to the finish, but took joint 2nd in the overall rankings in 3 days 1 hour 36 minutes, and top spot in the pairs and solo classes. Hopefully Noel can keep his winning streak going when he once again leads an Irish team in the Eco-Challenge in Fiji later this year.