This weekend saw the Heldekruin provincial race go down and what an awesome days racing it was for the GP riders.

Sundays race was held on the newly designed Heldekruin track and what an awesome track it is! The new longer course uses the top half of the old track and then cuts back across the hill adding more distance and elevation to the overall track. The new section also adds much welcome high speed sections, some steep declines, pedaling sections, and technical rock gardens. All of this squeezed into a fast run of which the top guys were clocking times under 1.20.

A big thanks must go out to the guys who spent many days building the new track. Without their effort none of the riders would have such an awesome track to race on. Another highlight of the weekend was the amazing rider turn out this weekend. A total of 32 riders entered the race, with classes being split into hard tail, sport, and elite. Although it was a cold day the sun was shining and the cooler temps actually made riding a the exposed hill almost perfect.

Special mention must go out to a few riders who rode amazingly well on Sunday. Alex Frisbee put on an awesome performance, and was riding through the last rock garden smoother then anyone. He ended up taking 5th place in Elite for his efforts. Oliver Cleverne also rode incredibly well in his first ever DH race (he had only been on a DH bike for 2 days including race day) and put in a very respectable time of 1.28 in the sport class. Finally our boy Brad Illingworth rode like a machine to take 3rd spot in the elite class! His time was less then a second down on first and second place in his first ever Elite race. And if you consider he has only been riding DH for 5 months you can see why this performance is so good.

The top 6 fastest riders were as follows: (Apologies for not knowing everyones full names. We will post the full results when they are announced). A big thanks must also go to the folks from Seven Human for donating the kick ass medals that were given to the winners.

1 – Dirk (1.14)
2 – Alexander Bramley (1.14)
3 – Brad Illingworth (1.15)
4 – Matt Smith (1.18)
5 – Alex Frisbee
6 – Marius

Here are a few snaps from the days riding taken as the guys came out of the last rock garden towards the finish.

Tags: Gautheng DH, Heldekruin

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 8:49 am and is filed under Downhill, Events. 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.