Hamish Mackie (Big Foot) and Newcastle pair Robert Lewin and Carolyn Matthews won all three events to dominate the ACT MTBO championships held in very warm weather over the weekend.
Hamish won a star-studded M40 field, riding down an age class, while Robert won M70 and Carolyn (pictured left) had three close tussles with fellow Australian rep Tamsin Barnes from Queensland in W50.
Garingal's Istvan Kertesz took out the non-championship Open 3 class at each event as well.
NSW riders made up half the field, which would have been larger still had the Victorian borders opened a week earlier.
After a gorgeous Sprint on Saturday morning where there were options to ride through open fields, temps were touching 30C on the open fire trails and twisting steep single track for the Middle in the afternoon at Kowen Forest.
Courses were much longer than expected and winning times blew out, with many riders abandoning their course.
Conditions thankfully stayed mild on Sunday morning for the Long where you could really stretch out your legs on the fire trails.
Other NSW winners across the three days were:
Sprint: M50 Andrew Power (NC), M60 Eoin Rothery (BF), W20 Clare Jessup (Garingal).
Middle: M50 Shane Trotter (NC), M60 Malcolm Roberts (NC), E bike Tim Hackney (NC).
Long: M12 Alon Gudes (Uringa), M50 Andrew Power (NC), M60 Malcolm Roberts (NC), Open 4 Nikolett Halmai (GO), Open 5 Ian Jessup (GO).
We should also mention the extra effort put in by Ori Gudes (UR) who rode 60km in his three races, another 10km shadowing his 8-year-old son Alon, then backed up to run 4km and win the Medium Line course at the River and Bay Series back in Sydney on Sunday afternoon!
Life wasn't so rosy for clubmate Johnny Nolan (M14) who suffered the misfortune of a broken chain and had to walk his bike roughly 3km back to the finish. Ouch!
And it was great to see former Western Plains member Dale Wallace riding in the E-bike class, all the way from Dubbo.
A big thank you to Marina, Fedor and the OACT crew for a great weekend. You can see all the results here.
Our last MTBO event for 2020 is Newcastle's BOSS 3 at Neath on Sunday December 13. Details here.
