However, this relaxation came to a finish very quickly as before I knew it I was off on a plane down to Christchurch for the 6th and final round of Downhill cup. It was also the 3rd and final round of the South Island cup with the North island cup overall being cancelled due to the final round in Rotorua being rained off. With the point scoring for each race proving difficult to understand there was no other option than to go for the win and leave nothing to chance.
After arriving in Christchurch we headed out to the venue for a walk and to get our first glimpses of the track. Having never raced here it was completely new to me and the track looked challenging from the start, with an off camber straight followed by chute and then along into a good sized step-down. After some more rough stuff the track came out onto a flat walking track which it followed along for a solid 30 seconds. It then dipped off the side and into more off camber for a bit and then off a wooden kicker over a farm road followed by some of the sweetest slalom turns down a farm paddock into a wooded section followed by a fast flat out section into the finish arena.
As practice day dawned the clouds looked ominous and as we drove out to the event there were a few drops of rain on the car which (if continued) would make the track particularly interesting due to high speed nature of the bottom section and the roughness of the top. However there had been no rain at the track and the first trucks headed up around about 9ish with the first riders down getting in around 9.30 due to the long shuttle road.
I was on one of the first trucks up as I was trying to make sure that I would get the amount of runs I wanted during the day. On my first run down I took things really slowly just to check out some of the lines I had looked at in practice and to see what the run-ins’s to the main jumps were like. After deciding that none of them were particularly difficult, on my second run I launched them all successfully which gave me a load of confidence for the rest of the track. When you get to the stage that you are doing all the jumps/really gnarly sections on a particular track it gives you a huge confidence boost knowing that there is now nothing separating you from the rest of the field and that now all you have to work on is going fast on the other sections of the track. This may sound like I’m being Captain obvious but when you are trying to learn a track you have never ridden before he last thing you want to have to do is have something in the back of your mind reminding you that you haven’t done this jump or cleared that chute line yet. It can really put you off the rest of the track so I always make a point of trying things early on so I am on the same level as everyone else and can focus on riding fast.
The weather had been looking ominous all day and after a few more clouds came through we had some solid rain for about 20 minutes but luckily it cleared up pretty quickly and left a fine day with no wind for the remainder of practice which made the day even better. Riding in the mud is heaps of fun but the cleaning up afterwards sucks and I am glad it stayed dry as in the mud some of the sections would have been very interesting but for once the weather helped us out and stayed fine.
After a few runs down the course I knew where I was going and started to push the envelope a bit and after the lunch break I was riding comfortably fast and had most of my lines dialled and was experimenting with some alternate lines but by the time the last shuttle went up the hill I had reverted back to most of the original lines I had seen when I walked the course.
When we arrived on race day the weather had taken a turn for the worse with a stiff wind blowing sideways across the course, with no real shelter from the wind the track was getting quite badly affected and making some of the jumps quite hard to clear. After the shuttles started quite late I managed to get 2 runs down the course but on both of those runs I didn’t hit the main step-down as the side wind coming across the jump worried me a bit. Not hitting the jump was a cause of concern as while you didn’t lose a lot of time going around it, it was dodgy going around it at high speeds and seeing as most of the other guys in my grade were hitting it I figured that in my seeding run I should just jump it and see how I went.
This is where problems arose, because of the way that the points worked, even though I had won the last 2 rounds I was still only 2 points ahead of second place in the overall standings on 162 points and with 30 points for a win in the seeding run and 60 points for a win in the final this was causing problems where I couldn’t really afford to crash on either run as a mishap would surely have ended all my title hopes. This left me in a problematic situation. Either, go for the step-down (having not attempted it that day) hopefully clear it and then carry more speed and hopefully seed better, or, ride conservatively, go around the step-down and then have a safe/solid seeding run, get some points and then re-evaluate for finals. Being the procrastinator that I am I eventually decided just to decide when I was coming into the jump and left it there.
My seeding run started well, I had a solid top section, hit my lines through the off camber straights and then set up for the step-down. As I was coming into the jump I noticed that it was quite windy and (in a rare moment of decisiveness) I decided to go around the jump and make sure I got some good points. What I forgot, however, is that in my seeding run I was going a lot faster than I had been in practice, as I went round the jump I saw a big rock that I hadn’t spotted during practice and ended up cannoning off it and almost going off the track, how I didn’t crash or get a flat tire still surprises me. However I still had a run to complete and while the rest of it went well as I crossed the line in a time of 3.29 and into 3rd I knew that I had a bit of work to do in finals as the rider in second place, Tom Winwood had now gapped me in the overall points and was ahead of me by 1 point. This put more pressure on me to hit that step-down as whoever finished ahead of each other in this race run would win both the South Island title and the Overall New Zealand title.
Back up to the top and the wind had gotten a bit worse, not really ideal conditions for hitting the step-down for the first time that day but with so much on the line I knew I just had to do it. The problem with this jump wasn’t the size, I have hit jumps much bigger since I have been riding, It is more that as soon as you take off a jump in the wind you are effectively attached to 2 26inch sails which, In wind like there was, could equal disaster with me ending up in the bushes or off my bike, however I knew that if I wanted that title I was just going to have to send it and hope that it all worked out.
All of a sudden I was getting the 5 second countdown and then off and pedalling, my run started really well, much faster than seeding and coming into the big step-down I knew that there was only one option, I came into the jump super quick and pushed down off the lip to try and minimize my time in the air, I got lucky with the wind and before I knew it I was back on the ground and off down the rest off the track. I knew I was riding really fast this run and I was carrying so much more speed on the track I had to take a couple of different lines because I wouldn’t have been able to stay in the ones I had been practicing. I pedalled strong along the walking track, and had a good run through the off camber and kept a good line through the flat turns after the road crossing. Into the last tree section at the bottom I could almost see the finish line when I came off a ump wrong and everything went pear shaped. I was leaning to far back on my bike as I went off the lip and while it was a tiny jump I just landed of balance and before I knew it my front wheel was gone and I was off my bike rolling towards a tree. I bounced off the tree and when there was no pain I got up instantly and ran over to my bike picked it up and jumped back on and don’t think I touched my brakes until the finish line after that. As I crossed the line in a time of 3.24.38 followed by 2nd place I was instantly livid with myself for a stupid crash, especially seeing as the section I crashed in was high speed and the winning time was 3.24.11. A mere 27 hundreds of a second behind first.
This left me in a tense situation, I know that if I hadn’t crashed I would have smashed the time I did, but that didn’t happen and so now I was left with a time only 3 seconds faster than Tom Winwood’s seeding time which I wasn’t sure would be enough. Tom came out of the trees quite soon after me and I knew it was going to be seriously close but not as close as it was! When Tom crossed the line in a time of 3.24.49 I knew I had beaten him by the slimmest of margins at 11 hundredths of a second! I ended up in second place, it was oh so close and it left me wondering what could have happened if didn’t get up as fast as I did or if I hadn’t have crashed in the first place but what happened, happened and I am pleased to say I am now the South Island and New Zealand Series champion. This is something that I really wanted to achieve this season and I am stoked to have finally made it happen.
This weekend is the one off national champs in Dunedin, the final race of the season and I will be trying my hardest to come out on top and carry some momentum over to the Oceania championships in Australia which I am hoping to travel to.
Oop gotta go, we are off to Queenstown to ride the gondola.
Till next time
Bryn
