| NIS Final Dome Valley |
| Written by Aaron Fernandez |
| Monday, 08 December 2008 09:35 |
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What a great way to end the North Island Series. Great weekend with the weather - the last few years have seen riders running muds this time of year. There were only a couple of classes that looked in the bag for riders before the weekend started. And thankfully there were no serious injuries just before Christmas.
The course had seen a few minor changes to the one raced at the beginning of the year for the North Island Cup. There were a few extra corners put in to extend the time of the track slightly without taking the flow away from the course. For once Matt Walker didnt post the fastest time of the day although he did put seven seconds on the rest of his class and made a clean sweep of the series taking a max of 600 points and took the title for under 19's followed closely by the consistent and fast Nick Mead who got a great placing to take second just ahead of Chris Scott. Louis Hamilton also clocked up a hat-trick with three wins and posting a time faster than any under 17 rider and only slower than Matt Walker from the under 19's. 2nd and 3rd in the under 15's went to Hawkes Bay duo Jay Barret and Brandon Ransfield.Under 17's was unsurprisingly taken home by Vaughan Woolhouse, although George Brannigan had looked very fast all day but wasnt able to hold a run together and crashed out of contention. A lot of riders were commenting that he was quite possibly the fastest rider through the bottom hip section. Jake Davis and Bryan Beaufils were 2nd and 3rd with Simon Barrett and Jonothan Andrews filling out the podium in 4th and 5th respectively. It was good to see a competitive womens field with 8 riders. Napiers Madeline Taylor took the win from a strong local contingent which saw an impressive ride from the youg Sophie Tyas who was just 4 seconds behind in 2nd with Charlotte Clouston coming in 3rd. Overall It was an awesome race series to get us all fired up for the North Island cup in Rotorua on the 3rd of Jan. The Vets was another big class with the Rotorua boys invading our turf and taking the 2 top spots with Stefan Bennet showing he was fast outside Rotorua winning by 3 seconds from Dave Hamilton with Phil Walter 2 seconds back which also slipped him back to 3rd in the overall. The open was a strong field with the top 6 riders just over 3 seconds apart. Dan Sims just missed the podium by .01 of a second just being pipped by Hayden "Donny" McGregor who has really stepped it up this year proving it with his 2nd overall in the series. 4th spot was taken out by local Mike Davis who hasnt had the best of luck on his home track in the past suffering some pretty big stacks. Mavis was looking fast though and had looked like he had been training and was looking a lot slimmer. James Dodds who has been on the scene possibly longer than anyone else (he still only mid 20's) was riding his own design Zero bike, and riding it well eventually coming 3rd just .23 seconds off 2nd. Fittingly the race came down to the 2 fastest juniors in the world Aari Barrett and Brook MacDonald who have both just signed International contracts.
In february this year Barrett had taken the under 19 class from MacDonald who was probably the favourite to win having won so many times on the track previously. It was close though but in the end MacDonald managed to turrn the tables on Barrett and took the win by just over 1/2 a second and the overall mens title although still being a junior. Thanks to Jamie and all the AKDH crew who put on another sterling event. Lester Perry put together some Video footage here http://cuffo.co.nz/videos/bike/bike_general/1802.aspx Results: OPEN WOMEN UNDER 15 UNDER 17 UNDER 19 All Photos courtesy Phil Walter. Cheers Phil
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 10 December 2008 01:41 ) |
