Words - Jared Graves

Photos - Tim Bardsley-Smith

Hey again everyone! The nationals are over for another year (so to speak) and this year as I'm sure most of you out there are aware it was held at the always fine and sunny dustbowl of Mt Beauty, only problem was...WHERE THE FARK WAS THE SUN?

This place is kind of known for its hot, choking dust races and to see non stop rain there was quite different.

Practice for DH started Wednesday and straight away there were problems with transport as I think there were a lot more riders there early in the week than expected. 

I arrived Thursday morning to overcast conditions but no rain just yet. Practice on Thursday was perfect, with the track in mint condition and the soil nice and tacky.

It didn't last long as rain was predicted and right on cue it started to fall that night and basically didn't stop for the rest of the weekend. What more can I say about the next 2 days practice except; the huge amount of riders was really good to see, it was muddy as hell and the track got more and more chewed up every run.

I have to say I was quite disappointed with the track and I really didn't hear too many good things about it from any other riders. The top section was more like cross country single track and it really didn't get any wider.

The little uphill sections out of tight corners were plain silly, most of the track had very little flow in it and a one line track that had so many riders on it got chewed up so quickly it wasn't funny.

It was a fun track to ride for sure, but it really didn't have to be four minutes long (and that's four minutes for the fastest). A faster, wider, flowing track with line options is what everyone will pick every time over a tight non-flowing singletrack.

Ok, I think I've had enough of a whinge, it's just that after last years track for the MTBA nationals this one was a bit of a disappointment. 

The 4x was scheduled to start on Friday night and except for the fact that it was full of mud, which made most of it unrideable, the course was looking good.

So the 4X course was abandoned and racing was moved to the Mt Beauty BMX track. The BMX track is a pretty sweet little setup and always fun and saw quite a field of Australia's top BMXers make a showing, which didn't go down too well with the MTB riders given the venue that had been forced on everyone. 

But the rain just kept getting harder and harder until the organisers decided to postpone racing until Saturday night. This meant most of the BMXers left as they were all doing the Grand Nationals (I think) in Knox in Melbourne and were just doing our 4X National Champs on their way through.

So as for racing, it became a mostly MTB field once again and it all was a bit of a mess there, with the organisers not having clue how to run it properly at first and then losing qualifying times which made things really 'interesting'.

I unfortunately brought my 4X Hollowpoint instead of my hardtail as the 4X was meant to be on a proper 4X track. The Hollowpoint would have been an absolute demon on the 4X track on the hill, but a duallie at a BMX track is never going to be as fast a a hardtail.

I sill had lots of fun and all the brackets went pretty much as planned as I advanced through to the semi finals where I came up against Mick Hannah, Jared Rando and Ngari Jenkins (sorry if my spelling isn't 100% mate).

We were all neck and neck down the first straight with Rando and Hannah taking the inside. I got underneath Rando in the 2nd corner to move into second only to not cover my line as he elbowed his way back past in the next corner.

So Hannah and Rando went on to the final and so did team mate Nathan Rennie and BMX rider Michael Robinson. The final was really good to watch with some nice close racing. Robinson took the lead from the start followed by Hannah, Rennie then Rando. Some passing moves were attempted but nothing stuck and that's the way they finished, good stuff guys.

Sunday's Downhill was always my main priority though and I woke up to even more rain. After the one practice run that was permitted things were looking pretty good. The track was well and truly stuffed, but everyone had to ride it and as they say; 'That's racing'.

In qualifying I took it smooth and steady as I was afraid of sliding off one of the off camber sections and not qualifying at all. I made it comfortably into 7th place for the final, first was local favourite Joel Panozzo, followed by Bryn Atkinson and Sam Hill.

By the final the sun had started to come out and things were looking a lot better on course. The track was getting a bit tacky and times were coming down.

My run started well enough and I made it through the top sections OK, but came to a bit of trouble just before the second fire road crossing where there was a foot deep rut that I had been able skip out of in the mud. As it was drying and getting hard by this stage, when I tried to get out I just didn't go anywhere and it led straight to a perfect pedal snagging tree root, which stopped me in my tracks. 

I was a bit anxious after that and pinned the next, faster section, which lead to a monumental head slap as I dropped onto the 3rd fire road crossing after the bus stop. I thought i was gone for sure but it just put me perfectly on line for the next corner, can't complain about that!

I got through the rest of the track and then came the now famous, Mt Beauty bog hole, which was a 100m long axle deep mud pedalling section. If you kept 5km/h through this section you were doing well!

I thought I had a line sussed here earlier only to find that everyone else thought they had that line sussed as well and had made it worse than any other line through this section.

After 'Fred Flinstoning' my way through for about 5 seconds I was getting pretty pissed off. Why was that section ever in the track? From the first day of practice it was there and was NEVER going to dry out, why didn't they change it?

So I came down and finished in 2nd spot, behind Andrew Mills, who apparently still jumped the bottom gap that everyone thought was too muddy to do...nuts!

Rennie DNF'ed with busted stem bolts and others came down with no major dramas. In the end Sam Hill took the win, just how good is this boy? He killed it! 2nd was Joel Panozzo, with Mick Hannah in 3rd. Bryn Atkinson took 4th and he's surely flying now as well, Andrew Mills got 5th, and I ended up 6th, a bit disappointing but you get that at times, you cant' have a good race every time.

In the Elite Womens Tai Lee Muxlow won her 439th national title ahead of 15 year old Tracy Hannah (yes Micks sister) and I've got to say...what a gun! Ms Hannah truly is a rider that will be right up there in international races very soon. The next rider to beat Anne-Caro's run of consecutive World Champs? You heard it here first!

Finally, Junior mens and Farkin's own Lindsay Klein took it out by 10 seconds ahead of Ameil Cavallier and des curry, good to see Lindsay back on it after a disappointing (his own words) international stint recently.

Thanks to all the organizers of the event, Mt Beauty always runs a good race, and we all hope to be back there soon. Big thanks to Kevin Anderson at Ironhorse, Madcatz, Rob Eva at SRAM and Matt Martin at Oakley, thanks for all your help...now just bring on Eildon!!

If you guys are lucky I just might write something after Thredbo in December. See ya's then.

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