We first featured Pete Cooper as our second Onit-Grommit a couple of months ago, he's now on board as a part of the Animal / NZRIDE.com '07 race team. Check out how Pete's races are going and what's been happening around New Zealand in the leadup to the nationals, also look out for race reports from the rest of our team and other top riders.

Had a great weekends racing over the hill in Nelson.
The track was the 2006 national champs track, so it was really good to get some practice in for the coming champs.
A very large turnout for a Top of The South race, with i think about 55 entries.
The classes (especially junior) were very competitive with names like Dave Scandrett, Matt Scoles, Brad Inneson all traveling various distances to get to the race.

Got over to Nelson Saturday afternoon. Headed up the track for a few sneakeys the day before, as everyone likes to do.
The track was very slippery, with exposed rocks being the main factor in my recently acquainted cuts and grazes.

Race day comes round and we are stuck in a supermarket with a useless check out chick.
Eventually get there and get practice underway. Practice was good and i managed to get all my lines sorted for race.
First race run was safe, but got all the lines and came down with the fastest time in junior and overall.
However couldn't find any more pace in the second run, arriving at the bottom with the same time as the first.
Keiran Bennett must have had a peerler, winning the race. So i had to settle for second overall. Grrrr
 
Now to prisegiving, I was presented with the Top of the South 1st Junior trophy. -Stoked!

Top of the South series, Round 3.

The race was held at the old 2005 nationals track, Strawn's Peak.
We had to make quite a lot of changes to the track since then, mainly because of loggers hauling across the track and putting bloody great skid sites in the middle of it!
Instead of turning left after the hip jump in the middle of the two major skid sites, after the fast fire break sections, you turn quite a sharp right and head off a drop into a native tree section. This leads onto the original off-camber, straight down the hill track.
A few of the younger in-experienced riders struggle in this section, but they realised that the easiest way through is to get off the brakes and stay upright.

It was a very poor turnout on Blenheim's behalf. Their was only Justin Leov and myself that represented the town at a home event!!! shocking. The rest of the field was made up of committed Nelson riders.



Practice runs went well, with a total of six on offer before lunch.
We had no accidents so first aid was left sitting in the cold. A better way to have it though.

Lunch is over and we are heading up for the first of the two race runs.
The weather has been holding raining up until now, but a few spits are coming through with the gusty wind.

The juniors are off, and they all make it to the bottom safely, I was the last junior to start.

My run was a safe run, not pushing to hard so as not to come off. However it wasn't good enough as Justin came down the hill with a time that's 3sec's quicker than myself...... Bastard!

Second run was no better with me pushing it a little too much and blowing out a couple of corners, ending up adding a second to my first run.
That turns out to be ok. Justin came through the finish showing style, but that isn't enough as he didn't manage to take any time off either.
Keiran Bennett was the only person to challenge Justin in the senior men's, but still had 11 seconds to make up.
I ended up winning my class by 27 seconds to Nelson's Reuben Miller.

Looking forward to the final at the fringe hill in Nelson This weekend.