ICME Day 5
Stage racing is unique in that the final result is an accumulation of all stages.
Stage racing is unique in that the final result is an accumulation of all stages. So, what has happened during the 5 days and 7 stages shapes the overall leaderboard on a day to day basis. Below are a few of the things that have happened that have shaped the week’s racing.
Day 1. Paris Basson has his bars work loose in the middle of the stage.Chris Hanson gets isolated form the front runners due to soft sand.
Day 2. James Downing has a flat tyre and loses 3 minutes.
Day 3. Ben Mather was caught by Ryan Standish in the ITT. Ryan Standish has mechanical issues in the night stage and loses the leader’s jersey
Day 4. Ryan Standish hunger flats with 20km left to go in the stage, and loses a truckload of time. James Downing experiences yet another flat tyre
Day 5. No one has a bad day or anything go wrong
At the start of the 7th stage there were a few ways that things could play out.
James Downing had moved up into 2nd place, but had Chris Hanson (1:05 down) and Ryan Standish (2:11) down on him at the start of the day.
It was pretty apparent, therefore how the day was going to pan out. With Ryan Standish posting on Facebook in the morning that it was “Game on Boys”. James Downing was going to be attacked by Standish wanting to make amends for the Stage 6 disappointment, and he was going to be under pressure by Chris Hanson wanting to also move up the leader board. Ben Mather with a huge time buffer, was going to “sit back and watch how things unfolded”.
As soon as the race commenced in the neutral zone it was quite apparent to some what was happening. One, the police car was not going to cause any problems today and was a good 50 metres up the road. Two, Downing, Hanson and Standish were all on the front driving it through the neutral zone at 35km/hr! As soon as the dirt came up, Standsih went to the front and drilled it with Downing, Mather and Hanson all locked in behind. 5 minutes later it was a drag race between Downing and Standish to the singletrack with Standish demonstrating how much he was going to take hold of the race today.
In about the course of 30 minutes through the singletrack, Standish managed to put Downing under pressure and the elastic snapped. Mather popped through to enjoy the day out on the trails and Downing went into damage control trying to contain Standish to 2 minutes as well as cope with the onslaught behind him with Chris Hanson wanting to pounce and gain the 1 minute and 5 seconds back on him.
The trails on this stage are beautiful yet absolutely savage, and require nothing less than 100% focus. The rstage was also a fair bit longer than last years, with new singletrack pushing the distance out to 44km. This did not stop Ryan Standish from putting in a superlative performance and managing to get back the 2:11, and then some, on James Downing and go from 4th to 2nd in the General Classification. Downing moved from 2nd to 3rd, and Hanson moved from 3rd to 4th.
Ultimately, Ben Mather had pretty much an insurmountable lead going into the start of the last stage and needless to say, he managed energy expenditure, protected his equipment and minimised losses throughout the week. The experience of this being his 4th time doing this event, shone through, as well as his wealth of experience, skill and pure ability on the bike. A very well deserving winner.
It was not just the top 4 in the race who were battling for precious seconds. All week there was a lot of talk of personal races within the race, even to nab a top 30, not get chicked, or even just beat the terrain. The Ingerreke Commercial Mountain Bike Enduro is such an awesome event that offers a fantastic mountain bike stage racing experience for anyone.
