Turbulent Thredbo rewards persistent gravity enduro racers

Squidly Didly

Has Been
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More than 150 gravity enduro riders were at the start of the FLOW Rollercoaster State Championship event at Thredbo on the weekend. It was the inaugural race on the brand-new and fittingly named “Thredbo Flow Trail”. With rain at the beginning of the first race run turning the track into a muddy slide, U19 Oceanias Champion Thomas Crimmins used the second race run to win against recent VIC Gravity Enduro Series Champion Dan MacMunn and Ryan Delarue in the Elite Male category. Sarah Booth took out the Elite Female title ahead of local favourite Tegan Molloy.

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It turned out to be the expected big show down between tough downhill athletes and the skillful gravity enduro racers. A large number of riders decided not to take up the opportunity to do a second optional race run after a downpour during the first half of the first timed run, which meant that a lot of the winning race times were clocked in later in the day on an improved and much faster race track.

“It was a challenging race”, said elite male runner-up Dan MacMunn. “The track changed completely during the rain and kudos to the guys who decided to do another run.”

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With a winning time of 8:52.27 Thomas Crimmins got a gap of almost three seconds on the VIC State Series Champion MacMunn, admitting he had waited until just before the time cut-off to do his second run. “It looked like the rain was going to hold off and the track conditions were completely different towards mid-afternoon”, said Crimmins at the finish, being content with the improved track conditons. “This racing style will go off, I reckon”, he added. “Anyone can do it and all the top racers really enjoy it as well.”

Organiser Martin Wisata from Rocky Trail agrees, “We see such a wide variety of riders at the start line of our FLOW Rollercoaster and with each event we get more of them, which is fantastic.” It was a fun and social type of racing with neutral or shuttled rides to the trail heads and several timed sections throughout a race day, he explained. “The timed trails at a gravity enduro are mainly downhill, but not too technical with heaps of fun and flowy sections. It’s great to see a lot of women in the field as well.”

Sarah Booth, acclaimed downhiller in both national and state races, took out the Elite Female State Championship title ahead of local favourite Tegan Molloy and 4X-ace Vanessa Thompson in front of a huge crowd of spectators who was swinging to the tunes of the RedBull DJ and being looked after by the Wiings team.

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FLOW Rollercoaster coming to Stromlo Forest Park
The FLOW Rollercoaster series will have its finale at Stromlo Forest Park on 28 July and its organisers promise a pure gravity enduro race with a combination of neutral rides and shuttled transport to the top of Stromlo and at least three to four timed race sections.

For further race information and more detailed results from the weekend, please visit www.rockytrailentertainment.com

Photos: Ronnie Grammatica


Top elite results FLOW Rollercoaster Gravity Enduro State Championship:

Elite Male:
1. Thomas Crimmins, Bredbo NSW / Giant Bicycles Australia, Thredbo MTB / 8:52.27
2. Dan McMunn, Spring Gully VIC / 8:55.62
3. Ryan Delarue, NSW / 9:01.79

Elite Female:
1. Sarah Booth, Tanilba Bay NSW / Kona Racing / 10:03.08
2. Tegan Molloy, Jindabyne NSW / Thredbo MTB / 10:15.08
3. Vanessa Thompson, Yanderra NSW / 10:24.93
 
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