2011 Walcha Mountain Bike Teams Challenge

Post date: Oct 30, 2011 10:07:36 AM

A great days racing was had at the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Walcha race. There was an impressive turnout from NEMTB with entries in most categories. There was even a late entry in the Decrepit Yeti Riding Wounded, with dicky knee (Greg) and one-calf-Harry being escorted around by Harrison - more on them later!

Fiona, Jo and Holly convincingly took out the open women 70ks even though Holly was well and truly under the weather with more cold-n-flu tablets dropped then gels.

The Wooster family took out the Hosking family in the 30k event. This was a solid effort considering that most of the good hills and technical bits are within this section of the track. Michael’s pre-race family dressing down, following their defeat to the Hosking’s at the recent Duval to Duval, really hit the spot. 1 all, but who's counting.

The 70k mens race was represented by Phil, Chappo and Santa who managed to grab second in a time of 3:33hrs. Phil’s roadie attributes came into play with some very fast drafting and calling every hazard, including one “sh#t”, which was very appropriate considering the very rich green pastures which were obviously passing straight through those Walcha cows. Steve even managed to use the same call from the back of the pack, but this was not a warning for other riders but a statement of fact and disappointment. Peter P, Toby B and Duncan also completed in the open mens.

Now back to those Yetis. Harry and Greg headed out with the Armidale roadie Harrison in the 70 ks Mixed Age Category. This was Harrison’s first long MTB race so the hills and technical bits were going to be a challenge. He was lucky that he had two caring Yeti riders, as before he knew it, he had come off on one of those dreaded angled logs that caught him out. In true Yeti spirit Dicky Knee kicked into action with a sympathy stack on the same log but didn’t go down as well as he could have as he apparently ended up tangled with Harrison. After all of that they managed to take out second place.

The Guyra boys (Bill Perrottet, Dave Mills and Peter Malcolm) had a crack at the 90km Extreme course on their 29’ers to obtain 4^th.

Results will be posted once received.