Australian National Series Final – Mt Beauty

Australian National Series Final – Mt Beauty After the race in Canberra, the guys from Raw NRG a company based in Thredbo, offered me the chance to go and ride the course at Thredbo and stay overnight enroute to Mt Beauty. Kate and Ty at Kona Australia offered to take me, so off we went. Thredbo has been hosting races in Australia for years and is one of Australia’s two chair lifted mtb tracks. It is a beautiful resort, so small and secluded amongst the mountains and the home of a fantastic downhill track. It was the location of the second round of the series back in December. It really is a proper downhill track, 6 mins of speed, rocks, roots and some amazing flowing turns, I loved riding there. We only had time for a day here and the evening we spent looking for wildlife, mainly kangaroos as I had failed to get any good sightings up to this point. We drove for almost an hour on one of the most dangerous roads for hitting wildlife at night and saw only 2 rabbits and a tonne of moths !! Not good. Even the next morning we got up early in the hopes of seeing Skippy and his mates, but no joy…I really don’t think they like me !

We arrived in Mt Beauty and we were straight up the hill to do some shuttle runs on the numerous trails littering the hill. The next morning I was up early and met up with Kate Potter and her husband and rode a lap of the xc track…and this was finally my moment to see some kangaroos ! There were about 10 of them just out on the first climb of the xc track it was great to see them close up and watch them bounce off, they really are a bizarre creature.

The track in Mt Beauty was very different from last weeks track at Canberra. This time it was in a forest and had very little pedalling. It was steep and tight with some very narrow singletrack that required a lot of accuracy with your riding. Even after a huge thunderstorm the night before practice the track soon turned to a dust bowl and was quickly getting broken up, but in typical race day style the rain came with about an hour of practice left ! I did bring a pair of mud tyres with me, but really was not expecting to have to use them ! I even brought my new Rapid Racer Products neoprene mudguard which caused much interest amongst the riders as they had not seen quite such a pro mud flap !! However I had only one set of race kit as it was sunny when I left the house ! The qualifying run was pretty damn slippery and I was off last and managed to squeeze past 2 riders on my way down the hill only to crash on the last corner ! However it was only qualifying so didn’t matter, I still ended up in 2nd about 4 secs behind Tracey Hannah.

The rain finally stopped and by the time the race runs came around it was drying up well and the track had some great grip. I had a better run this time, a few mistakes, but I managed to stay on through the last corner and went into the lead with just Tracey to come down the hill. This time she was claimed by the treacherous last corner, a mistake which gave me the win by almost 9 sec. I was really pleased to have such a great start to my racing over here but more than anything it’s been great getting the chance to do so much riding.

I’ve been really welcomed and looked after so well during my stay here. Ty at Kona Australia has been a legend and the guys at Rockshox need a big thanks for sorting me out with my new rockshox forks for 2008. Also I have recently started working with Torq energy products and the guys from Torq Australia have really helped me out with product over here. So that’s it for Oz, I’m now off to New Zealand to take in a few of their National races in a couple of weeks.