The first round of the Inside line Mountain Bike Club downhill series kicked off at “Dazzleland” at Mt Torrens. What a great opening to the season. Ngari Jenkins, legendary downhill mountain biker who’s been riding since the last century takes his second elite win ever. Probably up there with when he beat Nathan Rennie to get through to the finals in the Dual Eliminator at Mt Buller in 1999.
With a comeback from local biking legend Steve Marsh and gun Pivot rider Will Rischbieth taking the world cup season off there was sure to be some very competitive action, despite a few of the younger Elite field being absent. Junior World Champion Troy Brosnan was busy at Sea Otter, Connor Fearon just had his tonsils out and Henry Blake had only just arrived back from the Junior Worlds DH camp the night before. Even with the young guys missing we still saw one of the biggest field of elite riders at an ILMTB round for a long time. Seeding times were pretty tight and it was great to see Marshy (pictured) hadn’t lost his touch, clocking in the fastest time for the morning session.
Marshy was happy with his run, but admitted he gave it his all and he’d find it hard to make much time up inn the finals. The Under 19’s class is looking good for 2012. During seeding the top 5 were all within just over a second of each other. James Chambers posting the fastest seeding time down followed closely by Matt Taylor and Sam Keogh. Admittedly Under 17 rider Callum Morrison (pictured), also posting times in 19’s pipped the field by more than 3 seconds.
Callum’s final time would have posted him 6th in the Elite men category. Needless to say, he won the Under 17s category by a three second margin ahead of Hayden van der Wolff in 2nd and Cody Barker in 3rd.
The under 15s class, saw little gun Matt Kelly stepping it up from Under 13s, and proving he’s been getting faster over summer scoring a 1st place in front of long time rival Will Badger in 2nd and Thomas Matto in 3rd.
On to the final runs, Jimmy Chambers (pictured above) who’s stepped up to the under 19 class with a number of others this season, scored a win on debut, followed very closely by Bryce Wing in 2nd and Sam Keogh in 3rd.
The big dogs were close as always, and it looked like Marshy was right about giving it his all in seeding, unfortunately, he went a bit slower rolling into 4th with a 1:38.600, just ahead of fellow Steven, Gebert in 5th, 1:38.770. Everyone’s favourite Ranga Simon Buzacott snapped up third – 1:38.030, big Will Rischbieth (pictured below) just missed out on the top spot by .03 with 1:37.820 behind long time rider Ngari Jenkins who just snapped up first in 1:37.790.
