THE Scottish Cyclo-Cross championships at Sighthill Park, Glasgow, tomorrow promise an engrossing encounter with a field of 40 riders battling it out.

The man they will all have to beat is Andrew Wright, of Sandy Wallace Cycles, who will be going for a hat-trick of wins in this lung-bursting event.

Wright, from Inverness, who is at college in Dumfries, is a superb all-rounder and won the Scottish mountain bike cross-country series for the second year in row and also the national championship.

Team-mate Jonathan McBain was runner-up in both events which concluded at Tummel Bridge, but he hopes to go one better at Glasgow.

''I have had a pretty good season and have been keeping in shape, training in the Pentland Hills and around Musselburgh,'' he said when I spoke to him in the workshop at Sandy Wallace Cycles in Inverkeithing.

It should be a good contest. The course is flat with only one hill, so there will be more running involved than the normal cyclo cross course. If the ground stays hard it should make for a pretty fast race.

Jonathan had a lot of success as a junior, finishing second in the British championships and winning the Scottish. So far he has not been able to translate that into senior success. However, at 21 he still has plenty of time.

''I'm looking forward to the race and after it I will take a short break before starting my winter training for next season,'' says Jonathan

He maintains the Glasgow race is wide-open, and he thinks Iain Nimmo, of VC Olympia, could be a possible dark-horse.

Other contenders are junior rider Scott Macrae, also from the Sandy Wallace stable, and Roddy Yarr and Derek Clark, from the Glasgow Mountain Bike Club.