Australia Week 1 – Sydney and Oz National Champs at Canberra (Pics courtesy Ty Kona Australia)

I seem to always time it pretty well when leaving the UK as most of my local area was underwater as I drove to Heathrow !! It felt great knowing that in a few hours time I was going to be riding my bike in my shorts again, no more overshoes, leggings and woolly hats ! The flight to Sydney went pretty well even though I was travelling with 3 bikes and a massive kit bag !
We were met in Sydney by Kate and Ian Potter. Kate is an elite xc racer Australian but living in the UK. She was back for a few months to do some of the Oz races. We spent the first few days with her just north of Sydney and got straight into riding the bikes the day we arrived. It was great to be out riding and having some local knowledge to show us around the trails. It felt like we had brought some of the UK’s rain with us as after the first day we had a couple of days of rain, but that didn’t last long and we were soon off to Canberra to the heat of the mid 30’s and a dust bowl!

Canberra is to host a round of the World Cup this year and the World Championships in 2009. It is only about 10 mins outside of the countries capital city and is the site of a massive bush fire about 5 years ago, so this once tree covered forest is now just a barren hill. The government have put loads of money into developing the area for sports and having such big mountain bike events over the next 18 months will be great for the area. It’s definitely not the best downhill course out there, as it’s so short and has little variation as there are no trees to mix it up. However they have done the best they can with the area and the track was fun to ride although there was loads of pedalling ! The xc trails were good and the arena will make a great pit area.

This was my first race here and it was the Australian National Championships. I was having fun getting used to the slippery dust and learning that my bike was going to slide whether I liked it or not !! I also brought my 4x bike out so had a go at the 4x race aswell. I spent the entire time playing catch up as I was so slow out of the gate, but ended up managing to get 2nd. It was then onto the downhill and although I felt pretty rusty on the DH bike I managed to just squeeze ahead of Tracey Hannah to take the win. I need to say a big thanks to Kate and Ian Potter and family for putting me up for a few days and transporting all my stuff and Torq Australia for sorting me out with energy products on my arrival. Also a big thanks to Ty at Kona Australia for all their help and transport.

A great start to my trip and already I have done so much more riding than I would have at home. Next stop is the final round of the National Series at Mt Beauty.