The third and final round of the Gravity Enduro South Australia (GESA) series was held at Fox Creek up in the Adelaide Hills, a favorite destination for riders of all disciplines. Hard to believe that the series is drawing to a close already, it seems like only yesterday we were at the inaugural event at Craigburn farm.
Fox had some of the biggest climbs of any of the events yet but this also translated to some of the longest and fastest downhills, earn your turn as they say! Still the dreaded climbing was made easier by the fact you could cruise up, chatting with mates (unless you have one of those mates who is super competitive about everything and they had to turn the up into a race too a�� everyone knows someone like that right?!). Despite initially being slated as a five stage race in the end three stages were used to determine the victors. This included the new Green Smoothie trail which was built by IMBA and is an absolute blast to ride!
Elite Men:
1. Andy ClarkeA�13.05
2. Brad McDonnell 13.39
3. Alex Waddicor 13.54
Elite Women:
1. Anna Puckridge 16.37
2. Bria Smith 17.15
3. Nicole Jefferies 20.21
Under 19 Men:
1. Cam Ryan 13.08
2. Curtis Dowdell 13.44
3. Darcy Grooby 14.19
Good racing across the classes, Cam Ryan won Under 19 but would have placed 2nd in Elite.A�With 90 or so competitors and it was well run and good end to a successful first season, see you next year!
The Tasmanian downhill series is upon us again with round 1 held at The Lea in the states south over the weekend. The notoriously flat and rocky track had a tune up over the winter with a bit of smoothing out done to the course as well as adding a couple of new jumps and and wooden drops to keep things interesting.
Seb O’hollaran passes the The Lea cheer squad mid-flight off a log drop. Support from the crowd heightens the excitement!Rock gardens are a notorious traffic jam during practice.
Saturdaya��s practice saw 69 riders competing with plenty of new faces on plenty of different bikes everything from dirt jump hardtails to 29er enduro bikes to full downhill bikes.Saturday afternoon saw some light rain causing certain sections of the track to become a bit boggy for sundaya��s race.
Tim Sumpton taking off!Australian downhill is synonymous with ‘rocks’, as a few riders found out.Remy Adderton dropping in…Kaine Cannon powers through a rock garden during practice, finalising his lines before punching out a top run to take Elite Mens.
Sunday morning had perfect weather for racing, with not a cloud in the sky which luckily retained for the entire day. Riders punched out the practice runs all morning for some last minute tune ups and familiarisation with the track.
Ewan Favretto punches down the trail, comfortable and focused on the bike.Even event director Matt Wood found some time for runs at The Lea. Perks of the job, hey!Doug Austin leads Connor Greatbatch OVER the rock garden during practice.Dereck West styling it up and getting low through the rough stuff.
Racing went relatively smoothly apart from Hamish Johns taking a spill and having to be taken away in an ambulance (Hea��s ok now) – the stoppage on the track caused some of the fielda��s race times to be thrown off resulting in race times having to be taken from the seeding results instead. A�Aside from this Dan Booker managed to take the win in Under 19a��s followed by Simon Palmer and Ewan Favretto. To no onea��s surprise Kaine Cannon took the win in Elite with Ben Hill and Remy Adderton closely behind.
Dan Booker on pace – staring the camera at full pace isn’t usually a good thing, but he pulled it off. Next time give us a wink?All race runs should start with a power wheelie…. Dan Booker taking off to 1st place in the U19s.Dan Booker coming in to land on his Norco Aurum.Ben Hill punching colour and style into the Tasmanian wilderness, yeeeewww!Ben again, holding it wide on a tricky rock corner.Adam Oates hitting one of Dirt Art’s wooden features.Riders had to be wary of webs like this; they’re no catch barrier! More of an unnerving inconvenience of “where’s the spider?!”
Thanks to the event sponsors Track X, Ironhouse brewery, Bike Ride, Dirt Art, Hill St Gourmet meats and many others.
Adam Aldous makes his way down the second part of the shoot, super loose and dusty by the end of racing.
Welcome to Barjarg, the first round of the Alpine Gravity Elevation Series, after last yeara��s success this year was highly anticipated with well over 200 riders showing up for the weekend of racing. Alpine Gravity put a large emphasis on making their races casual, relaxed and inviting. The first round of this series was no different, with friendly staff everywhere to help, but strict guidelines and rules to keep everyone safe, plus it helped the event run as smoothly as possible.
Lucy Crundwell makes her way down track.
As practice begun the dust stared to fly. With no rain to settle the ground over the past fewweeks, the track was dry and it didn’t take long for riders to have to space themselves quite a ways apart just to see the track. The dust being lifted also began revealing some surprise rocks, changing lines and at times catching people out. The elevation tracks have been designed with every rider in mind, from beginners to world cup standard riders.
Chris Panozzo pushes limits entering the valley kicking up the dust as he does so!
Mid-way through practice the shady areas became very popular spots to stop, watch, and practice as the sun got very warm in the midday sky. As practice wrapped up on Saturday there was many a dusty rider, with sizable smiles all round, though the track was slightly challenging the consensus was overwhelming amounts of fun.
A photographers life isn’t all that bad at times – taking a break from the sun!Todd Palmer pushes hard through a flat corner, holding in a big smile – riders really enjoyed themselves and turn around times were quick!
Race day arrived as did the sun again, though it was warm, the weather was outstanding with perfect blue skies. Morning practice saw a very efficient shuttle send plenty of riders down the hill pre-race runs to dial in any final lines and suss out any rocks that may of moved or appeared late Saturday afternoon.
Sean Frith somehow manages a run after Saturday nights shenanigans…Jackson White pushes through a corner in the afternoon sun.
Racing began and riders started flowing down the hill, and up the hill! With so much downhill under the belt it takes some getting used to seeing riders go up! Alpine Gravity Elevation allows riders two runs, taking their best run for the final result, meaning ita��s a very fair racing system which allows you to have a mechanical in one run and still be competitive, it also allows for personal competition to try and beat your own time! As the first runs finish up we see Dan MacMunn on top, looking good to keep his unbeaten streak at Alpine Gravity Elevation going.
Dean Lucas navigates through the rocky shoot mid track.Dean Lucas shows brother Jake Lucas a thing of two about cornering.
The second runs begin there are many more accidents and slip ups as riders become tired and fatigued. this provides excellent entertainment for the spectators in the final valley section near the bottom of the track who see plenty of riders become unstuck, and also plenty stay rubber side down at high speed, which is just as exhilarating.
David Ferroni showing that the big wheels keep up with the rest of the pack!Chris Panozzo shows off some of the skills which had him looking quick all event.
As racing wrapped up Dan MacMunn took the win keeping that record perfect, followed by Kaine Cannan and wrapping up the podium Dean Lucas.
Dan MacMunn pushes hard in the valley to claim top spot and keep his Alpine Gravity Enduro record perfect.You can never take the downhiller out, Dean Lucas powers over the line.Final Podium; Dan MacMunn, Kaine Cannan, Dean Lucas.
You can probably guess how this is going to end up…
We will wrap up our image coverage from round 1 of the VicDH series at Shepparton with this post; it’s all about crashes and compression! There is not really too much we need to say, the pictures do that, enjoy.
Motivation?! You find all sorts of craziness at downhill races.
Round 1 of the Victorian Downhill Series and we just have so much content to show you guys but as they say ‘a picture says a 1000 words’ so with that in mind lets check out some more of the action in picture formatA�from Jason Stevens Photography.
The weather was almost polar opposite Saturday versus Sunday, this was Sunday!Saturday on the other hand was sunny and dusty!Dean Lucas had a run on the small bike but then went back to the big rig but it makes you wonder doesn’t it…?!It wasn’t just Dean on the small bike though!
Media! Doing what they do in this case Jake ‘Banana Man’ Lucas getting the scoop from Ben Crundwell.
Believe it or not we still have some more coverage from the race for you guys, it’s something a bit different but we reckon you will like it!
Round 1 of the Victorian downhill series saw us in Shepparton and the view was great!
3-6-3-0 represent! Round one of the Victorian downhill series saw us hit up Shepparton (3630)A�- well actually we went to Mount Major which is about 30 minutes from Shepparton but close enough. It was round one so everyone was keen to get back to racing, it was hard to pick some people as there were new kits and bikes getting around.
Rocks were the name of the game, after 5 or so bikes lost their rear derailleurs to this rock the marshals came out swinging!
The track was rocky as usual, Shepparton actually held the Oceania Championships’ a few years ago so we will give you a quick brief of the course; the top goes across the ridge before riders had to negotiate several rock gardens as the course started to turn across the face of the hill, a few more rock gardens before some wide open flat corners and some big jumps into the finish, did we mention there were a lot of rocks?
We lost track of the number of mechanicals we saw riders having, either losing derailleurs or the air from their tyres/tubes!All the rocks made for some awesome riding though with whole rocks flying as riders came charging through!The rocks did catch some (a lot) of people out though! Hopefully everyone recovers quickly and we see you at round 2!Talking about rocks, this rock got dislodged in a rock garden midway down the track but it didn’t stop rolling and made it’s way almost all the way down the hill, dangerous for sure but not what you would expect to see coming towards you, it was more likely to be a bike/rider!The weather was interesting over the weekend, to say the least. Saturday saw hot and sunny conditions leaving a lot of people sunburnt! Sunday morning was much the same but just after qualifying a storm blew in coating the track with water and turning the ground wet on top but dry underneath making racing interesting.As per usual transport ran well and everyone was happy doing runs, yeeww!Overall numbers were probably down a little as riders are a little bit more picky as to which races they do these days but the pit set up was still impressive and there were a lot of smiles on riders faces.
QualifyingA�saw the usual suspects up near the tops of the time sheets, names like Lucas, Piribauer and Swann for Elite Men, Molloy and Wale for Elite Women and Morrison andA�Varley for the Under 19s. With racing though nothing is guaranteed, especially when you factor in the number of mechanicals and the prevailing weather conditions…
Fresh from racing World Cups, Dean Lucas was the hands down favourite and donned the number one plate. Photo extraordinaire, Jase Stevens, does his thing in the background!13, unlucky for some…
And sure enough… As qualifying finished the weather changed, wind and water hit the mount and threw uncertainty into everyone’s minds!
All morning we watched the weather closing in, hanging ominously above us.When it came it left the top part of the soil wet but underneath it was wet, good luck guessing what to do with conditions like that!The weather didn’t seem to worry some riders who just kept on blasting!
Racing, the most important part of the day! Much like practice all weekend there would be mechanicals and crashes, most of the big names kept away from this though. The Women was taken out by Tegan Molloy in emphatic fashion, she is really on a role lately. Under 19’s was unusual in that the fastest qualifier Callum Morrison, came down first, followed by the second fastest qualifier, etc. Different from the usual but something we don’t think is going to happen at the next round. In the end Aiden Varley took the win by over a second and a half from Ben Hill andA�third was Hayden Stead.
Tegan Molloy is on a role and took the victory here by close to 15 seconds!Riley Horsman holding it wide open in Under 19’sBen Hill took second place.Callum Morrsion ended up in fifth place.
Elite Men, the business end of the day and looked like all that would stop Dean Lucas was a crash or mechanical, fortunately for Dean he stomped the win by six seconds, second was Tom Wyatt and third Richard Kreuzer. The Elite Men dealt with the conditions unfazed and showed everyone how it was done.
No surprises really, Dean Lucas takes out round 1!Not everyone had the run they wanted though…!If it wasn’t a mechanical chances are it was a crash that meant riders had less than ideal race runs!Matt Swann had a less then perfect run and ended up down the time sheet, expect him to be back next race though!Trent Piribauer on his way to 4th.Riders were going Mach 1 in the rock gardens!Ina Jones on his way down, look closely….And you will see his derailleur with a mind of its own! Fortunately this was during qualifying!
Overall a great first round and we still have so much more to show you! Tune back soon…
