Willunga is a beautiful part of the state and it wasn’t even too windy!
The South Australian State Championships were held over the weekend at Willunga, a location about an hour south of the Adelaide CBD. State Champs is always a big race but this time it also coincided with the 20 year celebrations of Inside Line as a club! That is A�a huge achievement, considering how young the sport is for Inside Line to reach 20 years would make it one of the oldest clubs in Australia let alone the world! We will touch on this and the celebrations a bit more in part 2 but for now we will focus on the racing!
There was a new track on offer at Willunga. It was essentially an entirely new track to the west of the older tracks. Yes, it was dusty thanks for asking!There was a lot of interested people come Saturday morning who were keen to see what Ben Anderson had built for the week.The top part of the track was what had people talking, riders pedalled into a few wide open corners before they reached this rocky chute! If they succesfully managed to negotiate they would be greeted by a tight left hand turn before the track got steep again. After this steep section there was a series of rock drops before the course opened up into some wide open (and grassy corners) before a few jumps lead riders to the finish!
Almost….But not quite! The overall consensus was that the new track was a welcome change and whislt it had it’s challenging sections it was good fun. So that’s a big tick to the course builders!Conditions over the weekend were good! There was a little bit of wind on Sunday afternoon but it didn’t deter the crowds.There were a lot of brakes that got a good work out over the weekend!In fact we think there was a good mix of technical sections and high speed on the track.World Cup (and Championships) speed! Troy Brosnan was on hand to defend his title and was the obvious favourite!Troy was sporting some pretty cool modifications, the joys of being one of the best in the world!Suns out guns out! Connor Fearon was on hand but he was relegated to spectating injuries as he is still recovering from his crash in Norway.However after a solid season there were a few local riders looking to push Troy all the way, in fact riding across all classes was good with some of the younger riders going faster than we thought!
Heading into seeding and it was two old hands topping the men’s time sheets, James Chambers in Under 19s and Troy Brosnan in Elite. For the Women it was Cami Miller taking the number 1 spot, the track was wearing in quickly though so finals was going to be interesting. The remaining classes all had their race runs and it was good to see a variety of old faces come back to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the club. Some of the stories told were quite amusing,including how timing was done by stopwatch with riders setting off at predetermined intervals down the track!
Ian ‘Buffalo’ Jones had a good weekend overall despite a small mishap in seeding.We will focus on some of the other racing classes and action in part 2 of the report so check back for that!Under 19s were flying, it was Drew Gartery who took the win just ahead of James Chambers! Darcy Grooby crashed and finished the order, this race had it all!And the emotion of winning was there! With a very happy support crew on hand to witness it.In Elite Phillipa Rostan took the win over Cami Miller followed by Moira Love and Laura Kelly. Moving into Elite Men and it was Connor Clancy in 5th, Angus Maddern 4th, in third was Cam Ryan who always has fun, it paid off for him here! Second was Ngari Jenkins who always does well on this track!Rather unsurprisingly it was a flying Troy Brosnan who took the win by some 2 seconds.Podium celebrations were in full force!Overall a very fitting weekend of racing for the clubs 20th anniversary!Thanks to sponsors there was a range of give aways all series which meant there were lots of happy campers.All the winners!That’s a wrap for the season, we still have another report to come.
That wraps up part 1 of this event coverage, tune back for part 2 where we will include a variety of pictures from other classes and some of the other events that happened on the weekend!
Images in this article from RFPhotographics like them on FacebookA�hereA�or follow on Instagram @rfphotographics and from stock images (Henry Blake).
