As winter slowly starts to make it’s appearance up here on the highveld it was time again to go racing with the third leg of the Mongoose GAS Gauteng DH provincial this past weekend…

Waking up before the sun and the white frosted grass, the adrenaline charge of the weekend’s activities is the only thing that keeps the mind and heart warm on a cold winter’s morning. Giloolys is one of the oldest and toughest tracks up here in Gauteng and played host to the 3^rd leg of the local Mongoose GAS DH series.

ELITES

With a lot of development going on at other tracks and the abundant summer rains this year, the Giloolys track looked a bit worse for wear and was in dire need of some serious tlc in order to get it up to standard for a weekend of racing. Luckily the local GAS boys all pitched in and some great work was done to fix up the track for the weekend’s upcoming event. Many thanks to the heroes: Anthony Brookes, Andreas Hasenkopf, Christo and JP du Plessis, Ryan Heukelman, Ttynan Usswald, Marnus Swanepoel, Ryan Frerichs (winner) and David Hogan. The track was very well received by all riders and equally enjoyed.

A jump into a mini bombhole with a double – double sequence leading you into the wall ride was added during the build. The gauntlet had reworked line on the right which made exiting the chute straighter, faster and also safer. and were no major crashes in the Gauntlet this year which is proof that the hard work from the boys paid off.

SUB VETS

A field of 25 riders entered during practice on Saturday with some new faces coming out to get a piece Gauteng’s gnarliest DH tracks. The weather played along for Saturday’s qualifying runs and everyone was getting comfortable with the track. Ryno did a trail run with the Velo X timer and clocked a 1:58.34 which is frighteningly fast on a track like this, set the bench mark to beat with a 1:45.51 during official qualifying.

JUNIORS (Luke Evans absent)

Racing started around 11:00 on Sunday with a light wind and a bit of a chill factor and things were running smooth as usual. After the first few runs a call on the radio came through that Neil Evans had a crash on the last rock roll over at the finish and the track was closed to allow the medics access to the injured rider. The paramedics took swift action and Neil was taken to Linksfield hospital in the ambulance as precautionary measure. The first runs were restarted to allow the riders behind Neil a fair chance to put up a good time on a clear track but were met by approaching flames no thanks to some inconsiderate vagrant’s arsonistic tendencies. The last riders were lined up and set off for run 1 but it was clear that the hill top breeze would push the flames too deep into the track and it would not be safe to go up for a second run. The race was stopped and the overall results after run 1 was as follows:

1     Ryan Frerichs                   EM      1:46.09

2     JP du Plessis                     JM       1:49.90

3     David Hogan                   EM      1:50.47

4     Matt Smith                       SVM   1:50.53

5     Anthony Brookes             EM      1:52.09

6     Ryno Fourie                     EM      1:55.33

7     Laurentius Potgieter         SVM   2:01.59

8     Marius Snyman                EM      2:10.53

9     Marnus Swanepoel           EM      2:10.87

10   Mark Price                        SP        2:13.16

11   James Morland                 VM      2:14.03

12   Des Ellis                           SVM   2:16.85

13   Nolan Couzyn                  SP        2:33.38

14   Luke Evans                      JM       2:34.92

15   Johan Woest                     SP        3:03.98

16   Dorette Crous                  SVW   3:09.38

17   Tynan Usswald                JM       3:11.67

18   Andreas Hasenkopf         SP        3:53.47

19   Ryan Casey                      JM       5:55.84

20   Neil Evans                        VM      DNF

21   Jaco Pretorius                   JM       DNF

A very big thank you to all of the riders and spectators for turning up and supporting the sport.

But the event will not be possible without our title sponsors Mongoose and several other partners. Moyo Medics, Redbull, Goldfields Kennel Club, Ekhuruleni Metropolitan Municipality, Titatinium Designs and the GAS club members who helped running the event.

Round 4 in the Mongoose GAS provincial DH series is on 25 & 26 June in Malelane on Dirk Lourens’s (and in my opinion, one of the best DH tracks in the country) private track. Due to the travel distance required this race will be subsidised in some way or form and race entry will be drastically lowered but more detail will follow soon.

Neil Evans surrounded by the Moyo Medics team.

Photos courtesy of  Erlo Brown and Christo du Plessis.

Tags: GAS, Gauteng DH, Giloolys, Giloolys DH track, Giloolys Farm, mongoose, Redbull

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Downhill, Events, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.