SI Cup Round 3 - Christchurch 20-21/01/12

I never had any intention of racing this race due to lack of money. But after the 2nd race of the SI Cup in Dunedin, was offered a spot on the NZ Monster Specialized team since one of their riders (Cam Johnson) had injured themselves in the 1st race of the SI Cup in Queenstown. It just so happened that he was the only rider on the team that rode a small and all his kit and gear was the size as what I normally wear while racing.

I flew down to Christchurch after lunch on the Thursday and Hendi picked me and we went back to his where we waited for Louis to get in on his flight that came in a couple of hours later than mine. Once Louis was picked up we carried on to Methven where we checked into our accomodation and then headed up to teh track to do a track walk. Brian (the teams mechanic) dropped us (Louis, Richard, Hendi and Me (Bryn was joining us later as he was still making his way up from spending the weekend in Queenstown with some mates)) at the top. The top of the track was pretty much all just one line and was essentially a freeride track. Fast and flowy with some decent size jumps. All the jumps looked like if you made the one before you would make the next one and so on. I knew I would easily beable to do them all if I could just committ to doing them. The track then entered some trees just before you crossed the road to the get to the end of the track. In the trees the track was a quite a bit slower and off camber. The track ended with a drop and jump.

Friday was practice day. Since I was on a new and completely different bike I headed up as soon as I was ready to try and get used to the bike. First run down I just cruised down and hit one of the smaller jumps and knew straight away that I would be hitting all the jumps. The Specialized just seamed to jump itself. Didnt even realize I had a done a jump. By the 6th run I had hit all the jumps including the bottom drop and jump and big Step up about half way down the track. Now it was just time to work on my consistency on the end drop and jump. The drop was realively easy to get wrong and the jump very easy to overshoot. By the end of the day I had the track pretty much sorted and was getting pretty close to getting the end drop and right everytime.

Saturday was race day. I managed to get 2 practice in before practice closed. Through out the day two people got helicoptered out of the track both after getting the end drop wrong. The first person ended up with 2 broken legs, the femur on one leg and the tibia and fibula on the other leg. Seeding run was good and I was happy with how it went. Didnt pedal as hard and long as I should have and decided to save it for race run since I knew i already had the overall and it wouldnt make much of a difference to me if I didnt win the seedings. I won the seedings and feeling good for my race run. With a long wait up the top for our race runs after the 2nd person went down on the end drop just after the last couple of under 19 males and the first couple of elite females had left the start line. This caused 4 people to need a rerun. There was a long delay while we waited for the injured rider to get sorted out and for the rerun riders to make their way back to the top. Again like my seeding run I was happy with how it went. Hit all the jumps and all my lines and gave it everything.

Since this was the last round of the South Island Cup and I had won all the seedings and race runs at each of the 3 races I easily took the overall.

I would just like to thank bicycle.co.nz for their support over the past couple of years and also to Hendi (Darryn Henderson) for putting me on the Monster team and the team mechanice Brian Tindall for keeping the bike running mint. I would also like to thank the Monster team and their sponsors: Monster Energy, Specialized Bikes, Fox Racing Shox, Troy Lee Designs, Oakley, Shimano.