Juzzy is sooo fast our cameras were lucky to capture him!

The season kicked off at the ever popular Long Gully venue in Healesville. A partially new course was presented to the riders and was very well received. The highlight was the tricky rock garden into the steep off camber and wildly fast straight into tight left hander towards the road gap with a very tricky off camber landing. The road gap was causing all sorts of problems and was a true test of skill. Even the very best guys were having a hard time getting around the left corner.

The weather was spot on all weekend and the track was very dusty at best, and super deep powder dust at races end. Racing got under way on time and Team YVC rider Brendan Wood qualified in first in Elite. Alex Swann and myself just scraped in for qualifying with scrappy runs and who knows what happened to Ash.
Massive props to XC convert, Joel Healy, for winning the Expert Men race after qualifying 2nd. Good work skinny man.
Under 17 men was taken by Big Ben Barrett with a great time and Team YVC rider Anthony Jones did really well with a great third place after qualifying first. 
Toby Breheny was quick all weekend and took out Under 19 Men in front of Kona/Mt Buller rider Tim Harrington and David Maud.
In the women’s Kristina Shiel was never threatened and kept it upright for the win.
In the Elite men’s finals we had some great racing to top off a great day. The win was taken by Ben ‘home track advantage’ Reynolds, who didn’t even jump the road gap. Second was Chris Whitelock with a great ride on his Orange and Lincoln ‘leverage’ Verass took home third. Our boy Woody came in with a solid fifth, with last years Long Gully winner Alex Swann giving Kona a ninth place with a sluggish run. I put it down big time in the finals and was shattered but pulled into 11th.   

Now, most people will be aware of the timing problems that occurred at Long Gully. For those who aren’t, here’s the story. Wayne Hines from Club Mud, was brought in to do the timing with other FTF members. He was the only person that could use the software at this stage and we relied on him heavily. Wayne was also competing in the event and during his race run he had a bit of a crash… freakishly he managed to impale himself on one of the tomato stakes used for marking the course. The stake went about 12 inches into his leg just above his knee and we had to get him airlifted out. Without Wayne we had no one there to operate the timing software so we couldn’t complete the results on the day and had to send everybody home with no result. We decided we’d rather give the riders the correct results one week later than give the wrong results and prizes on the day. We thank all the riders for understanding this as I’m sure it wasn’t the outcome you were hoping for.