After my success at last weekend’s round 4 of the Downhill Cup at Kaka Hill in Nelson I was keen to build on that for the 5th round which was also being held in Nelson, but on neighbouring Fringed Hill rather than Kaka. Now while Fringed hill is no new venue to the Mountain biking scene, the track that we would be using most definitely was. The 620 metres of vertical drop makes this new track one of the biggest in the country on paper and in the flesh it certainly didn’t disappoint!
Right from the start it was straight into native singletrack that weaved in and out of the trees and while there weren’t many line choices available it still looked like it would be a good track that would challenge riders. After a lot of tight singletrack, the course opened up a bit and became faster and rougher, with so little rain over the last couple of weeks the ground was bone dry and so it took only a couple of hours of practice before it chopped up and became a challenge to ride. Towards the bottom of the course a long fire-road section had been put in where the speeds that the riders were hitting were crazy, mess up down there and you wouldn’t know much about it till the hospital! After the fire-road the track dropped into a couple of steep chutes before some more native singletrack and the finally popping out onto farmland at the bottom for a big long sprint to the finish line.
Practice day dawned sunny and warm and after a week of relaxing I felt refreshed and ready to attack the course and try and memorize the track which locals had speculated at around a 5.30 race time. Right from the start I was enjoying the course, especially the length as it gave me the time to really get into it and attack the corners. I tried out a few different lines but at times was struggling to remember whereabouts I was on the track due to the length and some parts looking identical to others and almost paid the price with a couple of close calls. I was having a lot of fun on the track throughout the day and ended up doing 7 runs down the hill which left me feeling tired but feeling confident that I could at least remember where I was going and could ride the track at a decent speed.
When I woke on race day I was greeted to grey skies and the possibility of rain later in the day and as we headed out to the venue there was a foreboding feeling that the clouds were going to open up and make things very interesting. On the first shuttle up the hill there was about 5 minutes of heavy rain but that didn’t make any difference to the track with the tree cover preventing any of it getting through to the track. Getting off at the top of the shuttle road the rain had cleared and from the expansive views offered at the top of the hill the rest of the day looked like it was going to be a cracker with no more clouds in sight.
My first run down the hill on race day couldn’t have gone much worse even if I had tried. Pushing too hard I blew out the second corner and went straight into a tree following a rapid evacuation of my bike as the riders behind me came flying around the corner as I jumped out of the way to avoid a massive pile up. Back on my bike I took the next third of the track cautiously to try and ease back into it. Just as I was starting to feel better I once again messed up a corner and while I managed to stay on my bike my hip smashed into a tree and I had to stop just around the corner for a bit to let it settle down and make sure I hadn’t done any serious damage. After this I took the rest of the run a lot more casual and just tried to make it down the hill without any more crashes. But apparently this was just too much to ask as my front wheel found the outside of an angled root and once again I was down.
After finally making to the bottom I headed straight back up with my mind set on one goal. Making to the bottom without falling off. I was succeeding in this right until the last wooded section where I tried to scrub over the top of a lump and clipped my pedal on the top and was then promptly catapulted over the top of my bike and face first into one of the powder berms that littered the course. As I got up I was really thinking that this wasn’t my day and rode to the bottom and decided to chill out and wait for my seeding run.
Seeding came around and I set off confident that I would be able to put down a solid time. However, my nemesis, the second corner of the track had other ideas as once again I picked a terrible line and went off and hit my favourite tree again. After this I just cruised down the track but once again managed to go off track and off my bike. By this stage I had firmly had enough and rolled down to the finish to seed 5th in a time of 5.16, just under six seconds off the fastest time. All things considered I was actually pretty happy and was looking forward to my final run.
As I was going up to the top for my race run there was only one thought going around in my head, “stay on your bike!” And before I knew it, it was my time to go.
As I started I knew that I needed to make it around the second corner to have any chance at making up the 6 seconds needed. So I decided to ride cautiously until then and after successfully negotiating the first two corners I opened it up a bit and just went for it. I could tell that I was riding a lot better than I had all day and was carrying a lot of speed through sections that I hadn’t been previously, I exited the trees and was just about to enter the fireroad section when I accidentally launched off a rise just before the drop onto the road. Looking back I have absolutely no idea why I did but it was not a good option. As I took off I knew that it wasn’t going to end well and when my wheels touched down either side of a small rise I thought that things were going to get interesting. My feet both instantly blew off the pedals and my helmet hit my bars with head slap, as I looked up I saw I was heading straight for a tree on the right hand side of the fireroad and after a hasty direction change courtesy of my right foot pushing me in the right direction I somehow managed to get my limbs reattached to my bike and continue on down the fireroad. I decided that there was no point in worrying about my close call so just pinned it as hard as I could for the last section and pedalled across the line to stop the clock in a time of 5.00.59. This time was 16 seconds faster than my seeding time and I knew it was going to be competitive and as the top seed Jake Boylett came across the line in a time of 5.05 I knew that I had won my second national race in as many weeks!
To follow up from my win the previous week was pretty special for me as it proved to me that last weekend wasn’t a fluke and has given me a world of confidence going into the final round of the series to be held in Christchurch this weekend. Also the 120 bucks I pocketed for 8th overall on the day was a pretty nice reward as well.
