For the second year in a row, the Aus National Champs were held at Eagle Mountain bike park not far from Adelaide City. Mum & Dad drove over and arrived by lunch time on Monday, settled in then picked the boys up from the airport Monday evening.
Practice started on Tuesday with open practice all day, same on Wednesday. The weather was pretty good early in the week with tops of around 26 degrees but it certainly warmed up by Thursday afternoon reaching 33/34 degrees. Both boys got in some really good practice on Tuesday and Wednesday with split practice starting on Thursday. This meant we didn't have to spend the whole day at the track so we headed to the 'beach' for a bit of a swim.
Friday morning back to the track for a few hours practice before we would head home for a few hours before the boys went back to the track to watch Group A Seeding runs. All was going well until the bus stopped on the way back to the top and Porky told me to meet Thomas in the parking bowl as he'd hurt his wrist. Oh no!
I got to the bowl with Rick, Porky's Dad, Thomas was getting off the bus. We headed straight to the St John's guys for a (sort of) diagnosis. Seems he may have broken something so off to the hospital for an x-ray. Couple of hours later and the diagnosis was a fractured radius. Doc put on a half cast and we headed back to the track to pick up Dad & Andrew. Thomas was still convinced he would be racing tomorrow. We would have to wait and see.
Saturday morning came round and Ian took off Thomas cast as he wanted to see how bad it was. One lap around the caravan park and there was no way Thomas would be racing today. Cast and strapping back on and off to the track. Absolutely Devo!!!
By Saturday Andrew had the track so dialed that he didn't need much practice so he did the usual 2 runs before having a bit of a rest. Andrew's race start time was around 11:15am so he headed to the top to get ready. For some reason Andrew was ranked number 1 in Under 15's so he was the first off in his category. Usually they go off last years Champs rankings (which was 3rd for Andrew) but for some reason this year they went off the Series rankings.
Anyway, Mum and Dad headed to the bottom part of the track (not far from where he crashed last year) to see Andrew cross the finish line and make sure he got down safe. We could see him coming through the trees and with crossed fingers we were hoping he would have a clean run to the finish. And so he did, finishing in a time of 2:16.36 which was a really good time comparing it to Group A Seeding runs on Friday afternoon. Watching Joel, the second U15 rider come through the trees, and watching the time, we knew it was going to be close and that it was. After Joel crossed the line Mum saw that they were both on the same minute and second. Oh no, it was down to the hundredth of a second. The timing screen went blank for what seemed like minutes (it was probably only seconds) but when it came back up, it had a number 2 next to Joel's name which meant that Andrew was still in the lead. After what happened last year, I can't believe Andrew put us through that stress.
All Under 15 riders over the line and Andrew had won by 0.5 of a second from Joel. This is the closest Joel has ever been to Andrew's time. What a relief. Andrew was officially 2011 Under 15 National Champion. Yay and big Congrats mate.
Andrew ended up telling us that he held back quite a bit in his race run as he didn't want to crash again but now realises that he nearly held back a bit too much and nearly lost it. All comes with experience really.
Roll on the Final round of the Series in Shepparton in a couple of weeks. Will be touch and go if Thomas can race, however if he can't race, there's a fair chance he won't win the Series so positive thoughts everyone. In the mean time Andrew will be racing the first round of the State Series in Thredbo.
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