Here we are in sunny Adelaide for the 2010 National Champs. Mum & Dad arrived on Tuesday before race weekend after driving through heat wave conditions all day Monday and staying in Ouyen, some small country town in the middle of nowhere on Monday night. Cooler temps for Tuesday's 4 hour drive with a fair bit of rain along the way. Settled into our nice little cabin in Mitcham and then headed to town to get some supplies before heading to the airport to pick the boys up from their nice, easy 1.5 hour flight.
Headed to the track on Wednesday morning to walk the track and then start practice in the afternoon. Thursday all day practice then Friday and Saturday morning practice with the afternoons free although stayed to watch Group A seeding on Saturday arvo. All practice sessions went without a hitch, only a couple of flat tyres which are easy to fix. The track was pretty short so Mum & Dad walked it quite a few times and got lots of photo's and video's.
Early night on Saturday as we had to be at the track for practice at 7:30am on Sunday. Yuck! Got to the track at 7:30 with a few showers of rain on the way and also when we got to the track. Practice was late starting by nearly an hour, not real happy with that as all the riders were standing in the rain waiting for the track to open. No announcements made as to what was going on either. Not happy.
Finally on track and practiced till 9:30 with racing due to start at 10am. The U17's were the 2nd last division of Group B to come down for their race run with the U15's the last division.
Boys headed to the top of the hill, Mum headed to the bottom near finish line and Dad headed to the race village to watch on the big screen. There were 5 camera's on course so you could watch pretty much the whole race run on the big screen. Just happened that as it was "only Group B" there was no timing or commentary there so Dad decided to head to the bottom section also.
U17's on course. Thomas 3rd rider off as that's where he was ranked after the first National Round in Hobart. First 2 riders came down in really quick times, then we could see Thomas in the distance, coming out of the trees into the bottom open section, watching the time, we knew it would be close. Over the finish line and was in provisional 2nd place but with still another 40 riders to come, still watching the clock. All riders down and it was official, Thomas placed 2nd in U17 National Champs. Final results were Conor: 1:58.12, Thomas: 2:01.95, David: 2:04.66. Would have placed 5th in U19's. Very happy with that.
U15's up next with Andrew off first as he won in Hobart. He comes out of the trees, we look at the time and know he's having a really good run as his time is very fast. Next thing, round the corner, down the drop into the berm and comes off the bike in the berm. Oh no, takes at least 10 seconds to get back on the bike and then has an uphill to pedal before more downhill and into the bottom jumps. Andrew was absolutely devo. Final result: Max: 2:20.66, Joel: 2.21.01, Andrew 2:21.99. There is no doubt that if Andrew didn't crash, he would have posted a bloody fast time but hey, that's racing. Funny thing is, Sam Hill (best rider in OZ) comes down in his race run in the Elite Men doing a screaming time and just metres from the finish line, he loses it in the loose gravel and comes off. Took him from 1st into 5th. As we said to Andrew, see, it can happen to the best of them! Haha.
Looking forward to Shepparton next weekend.
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