Australian State Champs – Mt Buller, Victoria

Being so far from everywhere else there is quite a bit of rivalry between Australia and New Zealand. So much so, that when I was over in Canberra for the Australian National Champs, Mark one of the owners of Groupe Sportif, the company that imports Kona into Australia asked me what I was going to be doing for the rest of my trip. When I said that I was going to be spending 2 months in New Zealand he said “no one can spend 2 months in New Zealand. I’ll pay for you to come back to Australia for the Victoria State Championships at the Kona Bikepark at Mt Buller” I certainly was not going to say no to a chance to ride and race somewhere new!!

So here I am, back in Australia thanks to Kona Australia and most of all Ty from Kona who sorted out all my travel plans and has housed me all week. It was great to be coming back to race at a proper mountain with a chairlift! Mt Buller is one of Kona’s worldwide bike parks, so it was great to be able to tick it off my list of bikeparks around the world I must visit!!

Mt Buller is about 2.5 hours north east of Melbourne. It’s at the start of the snowy mountains, and boasts the ski resort with the most chairlifts in the whole of Australia. The mountain bike park uses just one chair at the moment, but with major plans of expansion with new xc trails and dh trails in the pipeline it could soon be the Southern hemisphere’s Porte Du Soliel!!

At present there are 2 main downhill trails with a few options on the way. This weekend Mt Buller was hosting the Victoria State Championships so it was the harder of the two tracks that was used, a track called ‘International’. A pretty good name as it was a rock and root strewn trail that would not be out of place at a world cup level competition. It was really tight and rocky for the entire track, and looking for smooth lines that you could carry speed on and save some energy would be key to getting a fast time. I really enjoyed riding the track and trying to go faster all the time. I did a couple of timed runs in practice and only then realised just how tough on your lungs this track was going to be! I had a pretty good qualifying run finishing in a time of 4.11. I knew I could go a bit harder in the final, and although the track was pretty blown out, I managed to do a 4.07 which I was happy with as I would have won the Expert men’s class, and was only 19secs behind the winning elite men’s time!

It was really great training for me this weekend, and it continued as the next day there was a fun race, called the consistency race, where you have 2 race runs and they have to be a close as possible to the same time, to show your consistency. It was a bizarre concept as I’m so used to just going as fast as I possibly can! I decided to just roll the track and not try too hard, but unfortunately that tactic didn’t work as I ended up doing a 4.44 on my first run and then a 4.50 on my second. The winner had a difference of just 0.2 of a second so as you can see I was quite a way off the podium!!

I continued to do runs of the track until the rain and cloud came down so much that I really couldn’t see where I was going - a great end to a fantastic Easter weekend at Mt Buller.

A huge thanks again to Ty and Kona Australia for organising the trip, and to everyone at Mt Buller for putting on a great event. Next stop is back to New Zealand for the last 3 weeks of my trip.