The League of Gentlemen 3rd Snakes in the Grass took place at Frankton Beach, Queenstown, on a moody Monday evening at the start of the Queenstown Bike Festival. The format is about as simple as it comes, and therein lies the beauty. Some of the best memories of riding when we were younger would be just charging around, dicking about with your mates in the streets and in parks. This is what we try to replicate with this social event.
Get a grass slope and about 20 traffic cones, and spend an hour laying out two equal courses. Do some practice skids, do a timed seeding run, do a knockout format tournament, with fastest against slowest etc etc. Have lots of heckling, a few beers, lots of laughs and enjoy riding your bike in the best and purest way.
Racing was fast and fun, with plenty of loose moments with people trying to find the limits of traction on the slippery grass. It never ceases to amaze me how much fun you can have carving around some cones on a grass slope!
Not that results are important, but the new Snakes in the Grass World Champion was Ozzy export Simon Buzacott, who put on a sublime display of cuttying and cornering speed!
The real highlight of the night was the impromptu “huck” comp which saw a everyone trying to go as big/long as they could off one the grass rollers. Sounds stupid, but my god was it fun! Bottom of the block, pedalling as hard as we could and then tying to send it as far as we could down this small grass bank. I think the eventual winner winner went a good 8-10 metres or so, not that we were measuring.
Until next year! Thanks to Graeme Cooper and Stu Greig for helping set the course and organising it, and thanks to everyone who made the effort to turn up in this already busy week of events.
Words. Paul Angus
