National Champs Day 1: EMTB, Team Relay and Adaptive
The 2023 National Champioships have kicked off on Thredbo, with Team Relay, Adaptive MTB and eMTB getting the green and gold jerseys started.
Words and Photos: Matt Rousu
After steady rain all night and this morning the XCO course was a little beat up, there are a few fresh cut sections, lots of fire road climbing and some interesting descending of an old walking track (which I walked and haven’t shot yet, we’ll have to wait for Saturday). The tech sections are short but they are really sweet too.
The two adaptive athletes took to the course first for 3 laps in what will most likely be the hardest conditions we’ll see this week, Dean McSporran took the win convincingly however offered to help Josh Lindenthaler who kept dropping his chain. It was Dean’s first race and he was stoked on the whole experience, he now wants to take on some of the gravity based events next week. Josh has recently had a heart transplant, the most difficult part being the nerves around his heart can’t transmit how much the heart needs to work in such a sustained situation meaning he just can’t get enough oxygen. What legends!
Next up was the E-mtb race. The athletes would compete on the same course as the XCO which in my opinion could have been longer for the ebike, however the conditions made the lap times quite similar to the analogue lap times set on a dry course. It also can’t be understated how slippery some of the climbs were, on lap 3 I watched every rider either dab a foot multiple times or be forced to dismount and walk up the tough final climb.
All eyes were on Brendan ‘Trekky’ Johnston, Jon Odams and Caroline Buchanan at the start. It didn’t take long for Odams to get a good lead with Trekky always only a few seconds back (Until the last lap). 2022 Silver medalist Caleb Dodds was comfortably in 3rd for the whole race before Trekky’s battery died on the final lap and he had to try and sprint without an engine, Dodds easily overtook to nab 2nd place.
In the women’s event the current Enduro MTB National Champion Jess Hoskin flew out of the start coral and never looked back, she battled with Paul Van Der Ploeg for most of the race and easily took the win. Buchanan was having a blast every time I saw her, putting a smile on every lap she would finish 2nd with future DH star Connor Mielke not too far behind in 3rd.
There were 2 relays this year, one for the junior categories and one for U19 and above, both would compete on a shortened course. It was another great battle in the main event with Sam Fox putting on a display to over take 3 quality riders (current U19 2nd and 3rd ranked riders Harry Doye and Cohen Jessen and multiple National Champ Peta Mullens) before taking his team to victory, my hot tip is he will be unstoppable come Sunday. It was a good hit out, almost every lap pitted XCO classification rivals against each other producing some great racing.
I spoke to a few riders who we would usually see on the Elite start line for Sunday’s XCO who have opted to race in their respective Master’s classes so as not to gain any UCI points, this is so that they can compete at the Marathon Master’s World Championships in Dwellingup, WA in September. So the Master’s categories will be stacked this year. We get a showcase of short and sharp XCC racing all day tomorrow with U13s all the way to Elite. Fingers crossed the weather stays dry!
