words: Jared Graves photos: Peter Denyer
Alrighty...Thredbo hey...hmmmmmmm where to begin...
Well I suppose it starts on the Wednesday morning before the race, when my good mates Lindsay Klein and photo extraordinare Pete Denyer and I left in the trusty Klein mobile from not so sunny Toowoomba.
After 16 hours and about 30 CDs we arrived in Thredbo at around 9pm Wednesday night, it was a pretty straightforward trip, no dramas to report.
We got into our place and were greeted with lugging our stuff up 6 flights of stairs, always a good warm up after sitting in the car all day. We were all pretty tired; so we cooked up a bit of a feed and went to bed, keen for the beginning of practice the next day.
Over the next couple days practice, much fun was had. The track was really nice and flowy and had some sweet flat out and fairly rough sections. It had pretty much everything, from tight twisty and smooth, to fast and rough.
Despite some threatening clouds, the sun stayed out for the whole weekend, which left the track super grippy through practice.
By the final days practice pretty much everyone who was going to race was there, around 260 people competed all up, which was pretty good to see, although none were too happy with the fact that the normal 4 seat main chairlift was down and we had to use the 21 minute long Snowgums lift (aka, Slowgums).
The cost of purchasing tickets and entry fees was also extremely high, I paid $180 at this race just on racing and getting up the hill, which worked out at around $12 for every run I did. I have no idea what it costs to run an event like this using the chairlifts, but everyone including myself thought it was a bit steep, maybe someone can fill me in on the costs sometime if you think this is an unfair statement.
Ok, back to the racing…woke up on the Sunday morning to pure sunshine, always a welcome site. From the start of the day everything was going as smooth as it could, 2 practice runs were had and bikes were checked, all was good for qualifying.
Some were not too happy with the start line position but I thought it was in a very good spot, nicely placed to get a bit of sped up off the start then roll into the first bit of singletrack.
Qualifying went really well for me, with probably the smoothest run I’ve almost ever had, I always like to qualify well but I knew on a long tiring track like this one, only one flat out run per day was going to happen.
So I took it hard but took it easy on the pedalling to save energy, I came down in a 6:04 to qualify 1st, with Bryn Atkinson 2nd on a 6:06 and Joel Panozzo on 6:08.
Qualifying 1st always gives you confidence going into the final but it was so hard to judge on a track like this who went easy and who didn’t. I knew I had a fair bit left myself, so I didn’t think about it too much.
And as it turned out I didn’t have to try and think about other things as I was in for some dramas which got me more than a little stressed before the final!
After my qualifier I decided to go back to our room to eat some lunch and just watch some TV for a while. SSo after slowly eating lunch and watching a little TV I thought it was about time to head back to the race site.
I went to get my bike from downstairs to be welcomed by a flat front tire, not such a major issue…except for some reason it took 4 tire levers 3 people and 40 minutes to get the tire on 2 days earlier.
The tire came off fairly easily, and I discovered the cause of the flat was half a tire lever between my tire and tube that had snapped off when the tire was going on. I had no idea it was in there, so I was doing runs for 2 days with half a tire lever in my front wheel. I think it’s a miracle it stayed up for that long!
I put a new tube in and spent 15 minutes getting the mutant tight tire on only to discover the tube had a faulty valve. For some reason I took this tube out instead of changing valves, put another tube in and pumped it up only to find this one wasn’t pumping either, the valve was fine.
So out came the third tube and I found that I was in such a hurry I had pinched the tube with the tire levers because I was starting to get in a rush. I took it out and had to patch it as I had no tubes left.
So I finally got back to the race site, thinking my troubles were over, when all of a sudden my tire went down again. I thought, “stuff it”, I borrowed a front tire and tube (thanks to the guys who helped me out, I would have been stuffed without it).
The new tire also didn’t want to go on easily, but the biggest problem was the tire not wanting to bead properly, It was going to be tight now, the juniors were on track and I was still at the bottom of the hill with a flat tire.
Finally after a litre of soapy water worked its way into my tire it beaded, i got the right pressure and I was off! (also thanks to glen for all his help) While at the bottom though I did get to see the women’s final, which was a change, with Tai lee Muxlow winning by a very comfortable margin from Emma Mcnaughton, with American Maxxis rider April Lawyer in 3rd. April is out here for our summer to stay with Tai, escaping a super warm U.S. winter no doubt.
Onto the final, I got up the top with about 20 minutes to go until my start, so it didn’t work out too badly in the end, I suppose it was lucky I qualified 1st and therefore came down last.
The only problem with this start area was the major lack of anywhere to warm up, on a 6-minute plus track a good warm up is necessary. Everyone tried to make the best of it though, riding anything they could find, I started to feel a bit nervous as my start time came closer, I knew a good result here would only do good things for me and help me get a solid ride for next season.
I came out of the start feeling a bit shaky and was fairly messy for around the first minute of the track. For a second I thought it was going to be one of those days where things just don’t work out as you want them to but I kept going as fast as I could and soon enough I was into a rhythm and was riding how I wanted to.
I pedalled where I could and tried to stay smooth to save energy. Sometimes you know if you’ve got but this was one of the times where I had no idea, I just came out of the final turn into the last sprint and gave it everything, and just as well I did. I had won, but only by 4/100ths of a second over Joel, that’s not even a blink.
It was still extremely tight back to Bryn in 3rd and last years runner up Jared Rando took 4th followed by Giants Andrew Mills and former world champ and Tioga/Orange rider Ben Cory.
As always the junior men were pinning it. Michael Kearton qualified 1st but had some kind of problem in the final which was bad luck, he was flying, but still between him, Ameil Cavallier and Liam Panozzo there was virtually no difference in qualifying. In the final Ameil put it together the best and came out on top followed by Panozzo, Jarah Breeze took third.
This was by far the closest race I had ever been in. When it comes down to being that close after 6 minutes of racing the difference is hitting on extra rock or one bump or taking one corner .1km/h slower than normal. I was really happy to be on top and I suppose at the end of the day it doesnt matter how much difference it is, as long as your name is on top.
Also I have to give a mention to Lindsay Klein who came in 9th in his first Elite race and Adam Smithson who leads the National series after 2 rounds. As always I have to thank Matt Martin at Oakley and Rob Eva at RockShox/Sram. It was a really fun race and good to see everyone, good to see a few guys back after not seeing them in ages as well.
Ok that’s it, no more, more to come later, sometime.
Jared Graves
