S.
ex offender
The final round of the Victorian State Downhill Series has been run and won at the ubiquitous You Yangs, on Geelong Mountain Bike Club’s new track, appropriately named Bandages or Glory.
The You Yangs venue is one of the best-known in Victoria, and always pulls a good turnout amongst the downhill crowd. The older, heavily used GMBC Descent racetrack runs in parallel with B or G, and the notoriously sandy dirt, coarse rock features, and hard pedaling sections are all just as prevalent on the new track, along with a number of new, unique sections and rock gardens. Crowd favourites included the double rock drop, the rock step-up, the rock huck-to-even-more-rocks, and the fast rocky stuff near the bottom. In case you haven’t worked it out by now, there are quite a few rock sections on the track. A fairly slow, pedal-heavy and rock-laden top section gave way to a much faster, flowier run once riders reached the rock slab drops, which lead into some fast, flowy dirt sections, a nice floaty step-down, the rock step-up, then a few berms interspersed with another rock drop, a derailleur-munching rock gap, and a nice hip jump. From here on it was simply balls-to-the-wall pinning through straight-line rocks, a couple of berms, a little chute and a little double right before the finish line.
Saturday’s practice saw most riders taking it fairly easy, the short track and relatively small hill making sessioning features a good option due to the easy push back up. Nobody had to wait in line for shuttles more than 10-15 minutes the whole weekend, which always helps keep the riders happy. Organisation was tight as we’ve come to know and love from GMBC, and the provision of cheap food and drink in the pits is always welcome – not surprising that they sold out of pretty much everything despite having truckloads of stuff!
Rain overnight left the track slightly less sketchy in a couple of critical places, but the sandy, gravelly dirt found throughout the You Yangs never seems to have any issue draining water away. Sunday morning practice had shuttles going up and down the hill at a very fast rate, but many riders opted to only take two or three practice runs so as not to tire themselves out. The sprint nature of the track certainly took its toll - despite being the shortest in the series, this track was every bit as demanding for fitness as anywhere else. The usual suspects in each class were tearing it up, and with a few of the trickier lines bunted off it looked set to be very tight racing, with few opportunities to really pick up time with a crazy or innovative line. The distinct features/sections of the track made it super easy to memorise your lines, but finding them first and doing them cleanly proved to be the tricky part. Fortunately all the harder features had B-lines, which made an otherwise intimidating track very beginner-friendly, and on that note it was great to see so many new riders, especially the younger ones out there having a crack at downhill racing
On the heels of the previous round at Ararat, Sam “Pug” Hocken cruised into the Youies round with a 4 point lead in the series, ahead of second-placed Alex Swann. This essentially meant that whoever finished ahead of the other would take the overall. Elite men’s qualifying saw serial fast man Lincoln Verass stomp the rest of the field by over 4 seconds, with a flying 2:01. The rest of the unusually small Elite field was jam packed into about the next 6 seconds, showing just how hard it is to shave any time off a run on this track, as well as how big a difference a small mistake could make to your place. Elite women pulled no punches, due in part to having only two competitors; Leonie Picton qualified a comfortable 8 seconds out in front. Anthony “Gobby” Gobriel decided to rip the course a new a-hole with his distinctive aggressive, ragged style, and qualified first in U19s as a result. Geelong local Jazza Bloody Wilson looked like he had Expert qualifying nailed down, until renowned nutcase Ash Parry put a second or two into Wilson’s time… on a singlespeed hardtail. Bow down.
Final runs saw Expert dominatrix Ben Davies take first with a 3 second gap back to Parry, whilst U19s ripper Ben Barrett went down heavily at the bottom of the track, causing some of the U19s’ runs to be aborted and re-run after the Elites. First place qualifier Gobby pushed a bit too hard and got even more ragged in his final run, taking 2nd place behind James Hunt. Picton put nearly 30 seconds into her only competitor to take out Elite Women. Hocken and Swann were both looking fast, and in tight competition for the series overall win, however it was Verass who stomped the track once again to take the win with a couple of seconds’ padding between himself and birthday boy Hocken in second, leaving Hocken to take the series overall.
Results can be found here.
Thanks heaps to GMBC and all the volunteers for running a tight ship, and since this is the last race of the series, it looks like Victoria will get a break from racing for a while until the King of Ballarat series starts up over winter. See you all there!
The You Yangs venue is one of the best-known in Victoria, and always pulls a good turnout amongst the downhill crowd. The older, heavily used GMBC Descent racetrack runs in parallel with B or G, and the notoriously sandy dirt, coarse rock features, and hard pedaling sections are all just as prevalent on the new track, along with a number of new, unique sections and rock gardens. Crowd favourites included the double rock drop, the rock step-up, the rock huck-to-even-more-rocks, and the fast rocky stuff near the bottom. In case you haven’t worked it out by now, there are quite a few rock sections on the track. A fairly slow, pedal-heavy and rock-laden top section gave way to a much faster, flowier run once riders reached the rock slab drops, which lead into some fast, flowy dirt sections, a nice floaty step-down, the rock step-up, then a few berms interspersed with another rock drop, a derailleur-munching rock gap, and a nice hip jump. From here on it was simply balls-to-the-wall pinning through straight-line rocks, a couple of berms, a little chute and a little double right before the finish line.
Saturday’s practice saw most riders taking it fairly easy, the short track and relatively small hill making sessioning features a good option due to the easy push back up. Nobody had to wait in line for shuttles more than 10-15 minutes the whole weekend, which always helps keep the riders happy. Organisation was tight as we’ve come to know and love from GMBC, and the provision of cheap food and drink in the pits is always welcome – not surprising that they sold out of pretty much everything despite having truckloads of stuff!
Rain overnight left the track slightly less sketchy in a couple of critical places, but the sandy, gravelly dirt found throughout the You Yangs never seems to have any issue draining water away. Sunday morning practice had shuttles going up and down the hill at a very fast rate, but many riders opted to only take two or three practice runs so as not to tire themselves out. The sprint nature of the track certainly took its toll - despite being the shortest in the series, this track was every bit as demanding for fitness as anywhere else. The usual suspects in each class were tearing it up, and with a few of the trickier lines bunted off it looked set to be very tight racing, with few opportunities to really pick up time with a crazy or innovative line. The distinct features/sections of the track made it super easy to memorise your lines, but finding them first and doing them cleanly proved to be the tricky part. Fortunately all the harder features had B-lines, which made an otherwise intimidating track very beginner-friendly, and on that note it was great to see so many new riders, especially the younger ones out there having a crack at downhill racing
On the heels of the previous round at Ararat, Sam “Pug” Hocken cruised into the Youies round with a 4 point lead in the series, ahead of second-placed Alex Swann. This essentially meant that whoever finished ahead of the other would take the overall. Elite men’s qualifying saw serial fast man Lincoln Verass stomp the rest of the field by over 4 seconds, with a flying 2:01. The rest of the unusually small Elite field was jam packed into about the next 6 seconds, showing just how hard it is to shave any time off a run on this track, as well as how big a difference a small mistake could make to your place. Elite women pulled no punches, due in part to having only two competitors; Leonie Picton qualified a comfortable 8 seconds out in front. Anthony “Gobby” Gobriel decided to rip the course a new a-hole with his distinctive aggressive, ragged style, and qualified first in U19s as a result. Geelong local Jazza Bloody Wilson looked like he had Expert qualifying nailed down, until renowned nutcase Ash Parry put a second or two into Wilson’s time… on a singlespeed hardtail. Bow down.
Final runs saw Expert dominatrix Ben Davies take first with a 3 second gap back to Parry, whilst U19s ripper Ben Barrett went down heavily at the bottom of the track, causing some of the U19s’ runs to be aborted and re-run after the Elites. First place qualifier Gobby pushed a bit too hard and got even more ragged in his final run, taking 2nd place behind James Hunt. Picton put nearly 30 seconds into her only competitor to take out Elite Women. Hocken and Swann were both looking fast, and in tight competition for the series overall win, however it was Verass who stomped the track once again to take the win with a couple of seconds’ padding between himself and birthday boy Hocken in second, leaving Hocken to take the series overall.
Results can be found here.
Thanks heaps to GMBC and all the volunteers for running a tight ship, and since this is the last race of the series, it looks like Victoria will get a break from racing for a while until the King of Ballarat series starts up over winter. See you all there!
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. good read. 
