Round 2 of the VicDH Series saw the sun shining, lets hear from Jase Stevens as he gives us the lowdown on the event;
Welcome to Mt. Tarrengower, Round 2 of the Victorian Downhill Series. The suns out, the rocks are ready to destroy anything they come in contact with and the dust… well it seems its turned up again. The camera equipment just loves all the dust! If there was to be a stereotypical Australian Downhill track this one might just tick all the boxes, red Australian dust, rocks, and just a ripper of a day. As practice started you could see the track starting to be pulled apart by heavy braking and hard cornering.
Maldon gets straight into things, not messing about at all, a couple of berms and your thrown right into the thick of it, coming into a rock drop/garden and from there on for a significant stretch ita��s rocks and flats. The top section of the track claimed it fair share of riders and tubes, even through the early practice sessions. From the rocks you descend into some smooth berms, as practice progressed the berms got looser and looser, by the time race runs came around some of the exits were like dust traps making it vital the riders kept as much speed as possible.
The track then descends down a ridge line where the rocks seem to disappear and some jumps come through, getting progressively larger as your come down the track. It was very interesting to watch riders styles change as the day progressed, as the landings became softer and softer more and more riders opted to stay super low and scrub all the jumps. From my stand point this certainly looked much quick and appeared much more stable on landing and having to turn.
As qualis began to quickly approach and riders stared to ease off the runs and the dust began to settle the wear on the track became apparent with plenty of the corners becoming rutted out with dust hiding those ruts, yet some parts of the track seemed to be untouched.
As qualis began the riding was stepped up and everyone found another gear, rocks and bumps that appeared to just be an obstacle suddenly became kickers to clear large sections of track, new lines came out and the speed generally went right up a notch.
Race runs begin and one thing is rather evident, therea��s going to be mechanicals at this round. Plenty of riders suffered the misfortunes of flat tyres and other problems, and other suffered offs over the whole track.
As the elite riders began their runs the track really started to get properly loose, just holding on to the end of the day. The final part of the track became a spectators dream as every rider came through faster and faster creating roosts from the loose berms as the rip down on the pedals to squeeze every last second they can out of the run.
As the top elite riders started coming down times started falling and each rider started taking over the hot seat. As Connor Fearon came over the line and took the hot seat there was only Dean Lucas to come. He appeared through the trees and cleared the road gap with ease smashing the final berm but oddly not pedalling, as the bike goes past it sounds rather unhealthy, pushing for every last second Dean ghosties the bike over the line for the win, only on later inspection do we see the issue Dean battled with to take the win.
Final results were:
Elite Men:
1. Dean Lucas
2. Connor Fearon
3. Rhys Atkinson
4. Tim Eaton
5. Trent Piribauer
Elite Women:
1. Sarah Booth
2. Tegan Malloy
3. Shelly Flood
4. Jacqui Lovett
5. Kelly Bayliss
U/19 Men:
1. Ben Hill
2. Aiden Varley
3. Mathew McCorkell
4. Ben Kelaart
5. Eliot Webb
All images and words in this article are credited to Jason Stevens, to see some more of his fantastic work follow this link;