014 BITS & PIECES Aussie Championships
The Stromlo Trilogy
FInal Episode. National Championships. January 2009
Cody Eichorn covering the Pirate with Stromlo’s finest dust//STEPHEN HILLENBRAND
This years National Championships was a solid show and a great event. Despite having copped a fair amount of flack in the last couple of years the race was well run and the Gold medals were handed out deservingly. Australia Day was pumping, the Aussie flags were flying, the BBQs were sizzling and the racing charged all weekend. The vibe was good, it was one of the most relaxed National Champs environments that I can remember in a long while. Maybe it was just me but everyone seemed relaxed, everbody that was there seemed to be enjoying the same kind of feeling. Most of the whingers and haters of Stromlo weren’t there to spoil everyone else’s good time which was nice. It is a well known fact that the Stromlo DH pedal is a pain in the ass, that’s right I said it. But what hasn’t been said enough is that the track is super fun to ride. It has to be one of the easiest tracks to get your groove on, get fast, hit some jumps, rail berms and generally just hammer the course. Obviously come race time it’s a different story and getting to the finish line requires more effort, energy, lung capacity and pedal power than you’ll find at the AIS. Still, I am now a bigger fan of Stromlo than I ever have been, the majority of the DH track is dialled and so much fun. The track showcased our fastest and fittest riders in all categories. You won’t find anyone on the podium who can’t ride a bike technically. You all know how racing works, ride down the hill, try real hard, get your time, fastest wins. Right? Well maybe, but there has been some tom foolery of late. Sam has been farting around on this track for a while. Sam pushed the gate open before he took off on his run, 4 or 5 seconds worth. Who knows what the real story is, only Sam does. General speculation is that he might be foxing, playing down his role at the next World Champs not wanting to come into the race hot favourite with a tonne of expectation resting on his shoulders. Maybe he just doesn’t care how well he rides there. Maybe he isn’t having as much fun riding Stromlo as he does other tracks, rumours, speculation innuendo. Nobody knows the real deal except for Sam and I’m sure we’ll all find out exactly what’s going on when he wants to let us know. World Champs aren’t far off so stay tuned! Mick Hannah however wanted to show everyone that he was a serious contender. As if we had forgotten that at any given time or at any given race, Mick can turn it on and has some of the best odds in the business of getting on the podium. Mick is still a young fella in the grand scheme of things. He has had a year off and as many people said, it has served him well. It was a great sight to see him back, he is one of the sport’s most talented, focused and determined riders and it would have been a great shame to see him away for any greater length of time. Politics shit me at the best of times and when the big races roll around there seems to be more politics than racing at times. ‘He has to wear that Jersey’, ‘You have to race this race’, ‘you need points from here to go there and do that’. Who cares? Generally it doesn’t affect the majority of riders especially in B and C classes which is great, because if these guys, the heart and soul of our sport had to put up with all these rules and regulations they’d all go roller blading. Unfortunately racing a Moutnainbike professionally for your country just seems to be a pain in the ass at times. Lucky I’m a privateer and don’t make my living from my race results. Moving onto Four Cross and a good solid crowd turned out and cheered on the racers. It does seem hard to get overtaking happening in Four cross these days and the drag race to the first corner to decide the winner is never good racing. Luckily the track throws up a few inside corners as well as some outside berms to give the racers and fans a few options. There were a few notable mentions, particularly the under 17s and the under 19s races which seem to be the most fiercely contested categories. Graeme Mudd won the 17’s and Ryan Hunt the 19’s both in front of hotly contested fields. Caroline took out the women’s win to back up her World Cup race win last year. The big guns off the back of their Olympic campaigns were always hot favourites (when are they not hot favourites?) and dominated the proceedings. Luke Madill always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, he made the final but was stuck in fourth, Ryan Henderson snagged the Bronze, Sam Willoughby followed Jared Graves’ shadow to the finish line. Graves domination and was clear right from the outset winning every one of his races. As usual the real racing happened on the downhill track. Rhys Willemse is our deserved Junior National Champion in front of Gower, Murrell, Hadley and a dusty O’Connor. In the ladies we had a Frenchy, Emmeline Ragot take the race win and a Hungarian native-Canberra local Julia Boer grab second but it was Claire Whiteman who took home the National Championship title. The under 17s was the hottest race of the day with the podium all ending within less than half a second of each other. Talk about splitting hairs. Fearon, Brosnan and McMillan are all future stars in the making. With one of the most competitive Elite fields at a National Champs in years the top 20 was packed with a whole host of riders that could have been anywhere on the podium. There were a few slip ups as usual and Rando was down the list, a serious contender on home soil. Brendan Fairclough and Sam Hill were dreaming of surfing on the coast somewhere (or were they?). Mick Hannah showed his strength and snatched the win from Graves by the slightest of margins. Ben Cory and Amiel Cavalier wrestled for bronze but there was no clear winner as they shared the 3rd step on the podium. I managed to scrape into 5th with a whole host of others barking at my heels only fractions behind. Most riders went slower or had a similar time compared to their qualifier as the wind picked up considerably for the finals making the last lung busting pedal even more satisfying. The after party was one of the best I had been to in a long time. It’s not hard to run a good downhillers party, the secret to success can be found in a few easy to follow rules. Feed the people, let them drink, let them dance, let them fall over, count your takings, everyone goes home. Good times! Thanks to Hogs Breath for letting us party on through all of the horrendous dance moves. By now you would all know that Adelaide has the National Champs for the next three years. Hopefully they can take some lessons from Stromlo and make a great Downhill event out of another vertically challenged hill. Catch you in Radelaide next Australia Day.
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Sam deep in the Otways forest//DAN PETERS
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with their first national series aboard tomac bikes now behind them, we check back in with our team to see how they’re all doing in the aftermath, and then spend a week hanging out with the 3 lads up at home in qld.
stephen hillenbrand
photos by story and
from winning big races when the pressure’s on, to being super intun e with natural therapies, rhys, tamryn and darcy certainly aren’t your aver age run of the mill teenage downhillers as we soon found out...
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Photos by
Tim Bardsley-Smith
I’ve been racing downhill for 14 years and have been a pro for the past 7 years. I’ve learned a lot during this time. What you do in the 24 hours leading up to a race has a pretty big effect on how you perform come race time. All your hard work & months of training beforehand can be worthless if you aren’t careful about what you do before a race.
Jared Rando
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Over the years, I’ve learned that there are no special pills, magic drinks or any special tricks that make you perform better. My philosophy is simple: be well rested, well hydrated, eat well, be relaxed and mentally ready for what lies ahead. If you lack any of these 5 things, your performance will suffer. I certainly don’t take it to any extremes though and still make sure I have a good time. Granted, at big events I’ll be a little more on edge and nervous but it all comes down to the same philosophy I mentioned before. I like to keep a balance between having a bit of fun and being super serious. I try to be relaxed and focused at the same time. The only other really important thing is to look after your bike and equipme nt. You can be as physically and mentally prepared as possible, but if you have a mechanical, all your hard work is out the window. Although the Mt Buller National wasn’t high on my priority list of races this year, it was still a race, and I still wanted to do well (even though in the end I didn’t!) Here’s what I did leading up to the race, which isn’t much different from what I would do for a World Cup. Hopefully you can pick up a few tips.
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Practice has just finished and it’s time to give my gear a clean and prep my bike. I’ve already eaten as soon as practice finished (it is really important to eat as soon as possible after any form of training) and a bottle of water is never far away. I’ll normally throw down some form of recovery drink as well right after practice but unfortuna tely I left that at home this time.
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I always like to work on my bike as soon as possible after practice so I don’t have to worry about it later on. I gave it a wash on the way back from practice and check over everything on the bike, check shock pressures, and suspension settings.
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I like to put on fresh tyres the night before the race so I do that while I’m working on my bike. That way the tyres will be scrubbed in by the time my race run comes around. I pump up the tyres to 40 or 50 psi and leave them like that overnight so that they are seated and stretched out in the morning. I set the tyre pressure before my fi rst practice run.
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Once I’m done working on my bike, it’s time to chill. Sitting is good, lying down with your feet up is the best. Family Guy is on too, so it’s easy to sit down, relax and pick my scab. I also have a few snacks, like dried fruit and nuts to keep energy levels up.
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Story and photos by Brian Finestone To most riders, working for a season in the Whistler Mountain Bike Park would be a dream come true. The chance to leave your mark on the Mecca of DH riding would be irresistible despite the backbreaking work, meager wages and cost of beer. The only thing is, there are never any postings for jobs on the trail crew because these coveted positions, however miserable, are snapped up by word of mouth so new blood rarely makes it onto the team. Not so in 2008 when two Kiwi blokes managed to walk onto the crew. Chris Martin and Adam King were in the right place at the right time and landed the last two spots for a special project building trails up in the Garbanzo Zone to replace some sections that were displaced by the new runs for the 2010 Olympic ski racing. As luck would have it the three-week project stretched on for the whole season and the boys got to ride, race and party with icons of the sport like Brian Lopes, the Athertons, Sam Hill and Cedric Gracia. The boys had been to Whistler before but only to ride buffed jump trails and gnarly single track as paying customers of the resort. The chance to ride and work in the Park was an opportunity they would not pass up. With ten thousand dollars worth of downhill bikes stuffed into their one thousand dollar trusty but rusty mini van, the boys set out to explore and film as much epic riding as they could cram into a summer while still working full time. “Those two are savages,” recalls Dave Murphy the Trail Crew Supervisor, “they would work harder than most new hires, would party hard at night and then rip the hell out of any trail that you would put in front of them.” Chris and Adam live to ride, but their riding is fuelled by a ferocious rivalry where one won’t be outdone by the other. Any trick or stunt successfully nailed by one will inevitably be stomped by the other accompanied by the usual barrage of insults. It is hard enough to throw your first back flip, but harder still with your best mate taking the piss the whole time because he did it first. Not content with the regular trail offerings, the Kiwis would use their charm and newfound connections to sleuth out bits of old trail and stunts that they had seen in various bike flicks over the past ten years. “We checked out every stunt in the park that the trail crew told us about and tried to talk the rest of the boys into hitting some of the rough ones with us”, muses Chris. One of the relics they unearthed was an old 25’ creek gap over Beauty Creek on Whistler, first sent by John Cowan for a segment in the New World Disorder 5 movie, “Disorderly Conduct”. The set-up was old and dodgy but the boys cleaned up the roll in, jump and landing and readied themselves for an after hours session on this secret spot located on a part of the mountain where riding is now forbidden. The stakes were high with the Beauty Gap, crashing meant an ugly bone crushing fall into a steep creek, but worse yet, getting caught meant losing their jobs and likely receiving a ban from working or riding at Whistler ever again. Adam recalls, “A local bear research guy came by and was snooping around but we told him we were just tearing down old stunts, after which he left us alone.”
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Adam King sizing up the gap.
Building the Mamquam gap.
Adam in Squamish’s finest.
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Chris Kovarik on fire at Illinbah//HILLENBRAND
November 2008 This round was kindly referred to by some as ‘Killinbah’. A little bit of an overstatement in my opinion. It certainly wasn’t jungle warfare like the Vietnam War with ‘Charlies’ running around scrambling out of the bushes with machine guns hunting you down. Maybe for some people there was that feeling of helplessness in the wooded section. What was on offer was the hardest track we had to ride this season. For those of you that haven’t ridden Illinbah it is a must do before you die to get a taste of what real World Cup racing can be like. If you can’t afford a ticket overseas or manage to get enough UCI points for a World Cup entry then go ride Illinbah in the wet and you’ll see what it’s like in the big leagues. This years event was a step up from the last, a much smoother and polished operation all round. The weather couldn’t be trusted as usual which seems to be the case when we hold a National round at any venue. So the road got a little flooded again, and the afternoon storm while XC was on and 4X was starting saw cows flying across the paddocks and team tents taking off with them. Elite Ladies put on a show of their own with Sarah Booth taking 5th, Claire Whiteman 4th, Caroline Buchanan 3rd, Leigh Douglas 2nd and Claire Buchar showing them how it’s done in Canada with 1st place. Junior fella’s was a battle of local knowledge. Shaun O’Connor was sandwiched in 2nd spot in between Tamryn Murrell the Winner and Rhys Willemse in 3rd. Kovarik rocked out and was hot favourite all weekend. That combined with a course that suits his style he was bound to be unstoppable. It would have been an awesome contest to see him go head to head with Rennie who stamped his authority all over last years event but it was a shame that Nathan was out with a fat knee. Chris did prove he is back in top form and that having a girlfriend hasn’t slowed him down at all taking the win. Josh Button grabbed a well deserved 2nd, Deon Baker a strong 3rd, I stumbled into 4th and Maltman got 5th.
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Photos by Dan Peters
Let’s start by winding the clock back 23 years, to 1986. The year that a radical new sport was just starting to surface over here on our shores. Mountain biking, cross country, it was sick! Downhill didn’t exist, in fact it hadn’t even been thought of yet. Back then this whole ‘mountain biking’ thing was a pretty new concept. Geared bikes with knobby were only just starting to appear in bike stores and as for actually racing them, pfft, that was bordering on revolutionary at the time. Across the entire expanse of Australia there were only a handful of tracks for these so called ‘mountain bikes’. Mountain biking was like a new
born baby exploring its surroundings and the world for the very first time ever. Everything was totally new. The sport itself was just beginning to create its own identity. Sure, mountain biking’s genetic makeup originated from the two main bicycling disciplines at the time, namely BMX racing and road cycling. But mountain biking was unique, it demanded new skills and opened the door to an entirely new breed of athlete. Someone with the supreme fitness of a tri-athlete, blended with the fearlessness of a motocross rider. Enter a young, budding, Rob Eva. Story by JT
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6 of the Best It has to be said that manufacturers across the board have really stepped up their games and taken the hardtail market to a whole new level in recent times. Just take a look at these 6 examples! It was only a few years back that the industry still had itself convinced that all a street/trail/park hardtail had to be was a size smaller version of their existing XC bike!? Nowadays the ‘jump style hardtail’ scene has driven forwards so much and the market for this style of bike has become so huge that if a company doesn’t keep stepping it up and producing something truly amazing and innovative throughout their hardtail range each season, the said brand is simply left out in the cold. This ruthless market is awesome news for us though. You and I, the people that are walking into shops and buying new hardtails as our riding outgrows our old rigs. The value for money, attention to detail, durability, styling and cutting edge technology that most new hardtails are coming out loaded with these days is nothing short of phenomenal! Rejoice. And so here we present you with 6 new options. 3 cro-mo and 3 alloy. Keep in mind this ain’t no wank arse ‘shoot-out’ style review. Quite simply we’ve picked 6 hardtails that we think are awesome for different reasons, in different ways…
One sweet balancing act.//TONY NOLAN