Thredbo - Australian National Round 3 -

Thumbs up for Thredbo, always good to head back!

We headed to Thredbo over the weekend in the picturesque Snowy Mountains for the third round of the MTBA national series. The track is one of the longest, roughest and gnarliest going around, for this round a few changes had been made – the corners and berms were built up which allowed extra speed to be carried across the track. Of course this meant new ‘pseudo’ doubles were being found by riders with their new found speed. This didn’t come without consequences – talk to Curtis Keene who couldn’t race after smashing countless wheels over the weekend. Even more worryingly was Troy Brosnan who crashed and dislocated his shoulder, with the World Cup season getting closer this was an unneeded set back, we know TB though, he will bounce back!

Specialized had a strong contingent of riders representing at this race, Brosnan, Graves and McMillan being the obvious names! Curtis Keene was unfortunately not able to race.

Richie Rude was also around the traps, he was sweep and not racing, he had to head overseas for sponsorship duties shortly after the race.

Everyone was eager to find new lines to shave seconds here and there!

Some riders, such as Tegan Molloy are lucky enough to count Thredbo as their local track.

The media were on hand to capture it all (& do some sneaky riding as Brett from Fektor). — The media were on hand to capture it all (& do some sneaky riding as Brett from Fektor shows us).

There was still a lot of dust to be kicked up.

There were new kits, new bikes, new teams and a whole heap of changes at the first round for 2016.

The weather was good over the weekend, riders who managed to survive until race day were greeted by blue skies and sunshine. There was some good racing across the categories, for full results head to the MTBA website. In the junior women Sian A’hern took the win, moving to junior men there were some fast riders across the category, it was recently factory signed Jackson Frew who took the win ahead of Baxter Maiwald by 6.35 seconds and Joshua Clarke was in third.

Jackson Frew has recently signed with GT Factory Racing and clocked up a win for his new team in the junior men class.

Baxter Maiwald on his way to second place.

There was a bit of time between classes to catch some rest, if you were lucky!

Moving onto the finals for the Elite categories, it was Tegan Molloy who edged out current series leader Dani Beecroft for the win in the womens’, Kellie Weinert rounded out the top 3.

Elite men was up for grabs with hot favourite Troy Brosnan out of action, it was good to see some different names in the top 10 showing hard work is paying off for some! The top 3 were Thomas Crimmins 3rd, Jared Graves 2nd (riding his very ‘enduro’ style bike) and Graeme Mudd taking his first national’s win! Graeme has recently made the switch to a new team/bike so this made it an even more impressive result!