SI Cup Round 1 - Queenstown - Remarkables - 8-9/01/12

Thursday before the race was spent making the 12hr drive from Nelson to Queenstown (I was already in Nelson for a family holiday which worked out good). For this Queenstown race and the following race in Dunedin I will be traveling with Ricky Pincott. Ricky did the most of the driving. Driving the first 9hrs with a small stop for lunch while I drove the last 3 hours. Once we reached Queenstown we checked into the campsite and pitched up our tents where we would be staying where we would be staying.

The next day we headed up to the track to do a track walk. We were only allowed to walk half the track due to the farmer whose land the 2nd half of track was on didnt want people on it due to his stock still being on it. Even after only walking a little bit of the track, I could tell the track was going be more fun that I originally thought it would be after watching a video of the track earlier in the week. The track was mainly off camber grass and off camber corners. There were a couple of steep chutes with berms that were sure to get blown out after a couple of hundred riders and been down the track. Once we had finished our track walk we back to where the Monster/Specilized team was staying to grab my new forks (Fox 40s) off them. (Hendi had sussed me out some new forks due mine cracking at a club series race a week ago). Once I had picked up the forks and thanked Hendi it was back to the campsite to put the forks on my bike and get it all sorted. Once that

was finally done I headed out to Wynyard to catch up with some mates and do some jumps while testing out the new forks. Have to say, the jumps were bigger than I thought they would be and the forks were definitely up to my standards.

Saturday rolled around and practice started. Track was a little dusty but pretty grippy at the start of the day but as the day grew on the track tore up, braking bumps became holes, berms blew out, and the steep bits turned to dust bowls. It was pretty much impossible to follow anybody down the track unless you didnt mind not being able to see a thing in front of you. I did most of my runs by myself, trying different lines and different entry speeds and what not. About half way through the day did a few runs with my mate following me to tell me where I was slowing down too much. Turns out I wasnt slowing him down too much and just needed to start entering sections of the tracks a bit faster, so I worked on that for the rest of the afternoon till practice finished.

Sunday was race day. I managed to get 3 practice runs in before practice finished. I was feeling

confident about how I was riding and new that if I could just hold my runs together like I had been during my practice runs I would have a pretty good chance of winning. This year was my first year out of junior so I went into Elite with Vero and a new chick from the Uk called Harriet. I had no idea how fast Harriet was so knew I had to give it everything. I gave my seeding run everything I had and was pretty stoaked on how it went, got a bit lose and drifty up the top but managed to hold it together to take out first spot for seeding in my category and also out of the girls all together. Now I knew I just needed to do the same again and hopefully better to take out the win. I pretty much did an identicle run with a few bits where i made some mistakes while also going a bit faster in some bits as well. But overall my race run time was on the same second as my seeding run time. With my time I took out the Elite Womens grade and bettering all the other girls times as well which i was really happy with. And too top it all off I managed to beat my mate who ive been trying to beat for about 2 years now by about 4 seconds. Really couldnt have had a better start to the National season.