Derrick Cant has led a posse of rookies in taking out awards at Newcastle's BOSS series of mountain bike orienteering.
Participants had the choice of short line course + a score course, or just the score course.
Having started on the score course in round 3, Derrick (pictured top with Newcastle president Andrew Power) swept the field in the next 4 events to finish first with 382 points out of a possible 400 - including wins at the last two events.
"I love adventure racing and this is a great training run." he said. "MTBO as a sport is awesome fun and great people."
Ginaya Dunn took out third place in the women's score course after doing all six events.
"Greg Bacon and Tim Hackney are very supportive of any new people who turn up," she said.
"I’m only new to this sport and mountain biking but I can see myself doing more of these events in the future."
And Tim Doman is looming as a big threat to Steven Todkill's stranglehold hold on the elite men's trophy.
"Hebburn was my third MTBO race, and I'm hooked! You have the freedom to choose how technical and fast you want to ride, and the race atmosphere is pretty relaxed and social," said.
Tim easily won BOSS 2 doing just the score course, then stepped up to do the Line + Score for the last two events - and won both!
This won him the Line Score rookie award.
Despite half an inch of rain on Saturday at Kurri Kurri, the tracks and trails remained quite firm and scoring was on a par with previous events.
Congratulations to the placegetters:
Male Line Score: 1st Steven Todkill, 2nd Andrew Haigh, 3rd Malcolm Roberts
Female Line Score: 1st Carolyn Matthews, 2nd Nicole Haigh, 3rd Sally-Anne Henderson
Male All Score: 1st Derek Cant (rookie), 2nd Marcus Lee, 3rd Brad Mertons
Female All Score: 1st Cassandra Thompson, 2nd Margaret Peel, 3rd Ginaya Dunn (rookie)
E-bike Line Score: Greg Bacon
E-bike All Score: Peter Ramsey
Rookie Line Score: Tim Doman
Rookie All Score: Derrick Cant
The final tallies can be found here - the R symbol denotes a rookie. The series had around 120 unique participants, including 70 first-timers who were alerted by our Facebook ads and word of mouth.
We say a big thank you to all the event organisers, and especially the BOSS co-ordinators Tim Hackney and Greg Bacon.
A reminder that there are three more MTBO events on April 6-7 at the NSW championships at Holmesville. There are Sprint, Middle and Long Distance events for all skill levels and abilities. Follow this link for details.
Following that, we have two DuO events (a combination of MTBO and Foot O) on Sydney's northern beaches at Easter. See the flyer for details.
