***Hi-Res Flickr Gallery is up here now!***
I thought I’d gotten up early for the second Skyline Speights Super D yesterday, but it turns out about half the field had gotten up even earlier. The car park/tent village was already filling up and come 10am, wheels were rolling down Vertigo, up some crazy long walking track, down Hammys and then across to the bottom of Turd, followed by a painful grass section and then Hammys/Original back to the car park.
There were some serious heavy hitting teams and riders in attendance yesterday which made for pretty exciting racing. Blair Christmas and Paul Angus, Laurence Mote and Kashi Leuchs, Cam Cole, Jamie Nicoll, George Brannigan, Matt Scoles and James Pollard to mention a few were all out there slaying the Skyline trails. But the best bit about this year’s course was the fact that it made things so even between gravity-minded teams and the XC ones. I guess that’s the mark of a really good Super D course. In the teams of two males, Alexandra downhillers James Pollard and Matt Scoles took the win ahead of locals Blair Christmas and Pangus in second and ex-XC whippets Andy Reid and Chris Burr in third.
The Solo event again was a good mix of XC and gravity riders with XC taking the win. Nelson prodigy Ethan Glover was just consistently posting sweet lap times and took the win over mega distance rider Ollie Whalley in second and Rupert Chapman in third, but less than two minutes separated them in the end.
Despite the high calibre of riders, the vibe out on the course was super chilled and I only heard of one complaint from a rider being aggressively passed. The whole day was fricken epic and the big question was why weren’t you there? Honestly, if you like mountain biking this is the event to be at! I only did a few laps but can attest to just how much fricken fun it was!
I’ve uploaded all the photos (360 or so) from the event to the site (just click on any image to head to the gallery) and here is the Results PDF. When I get better Internet I’ll post all the photos to our flickr account so you can download hi-res photos (for personal use only, eg. Facebook, Twitter, your mum etc).
