Rocky Trail Grand Prix Orange

Orange's Kinross trails, home of the legendary Ginja Ninja, host to numerous XCO and endurance events over the years. It's blissful winding climbs and joyful bermed descents, were laced together with some XCO-bar-biting pinches and white-knuckle off-camber loose downhills for this the first of the Rocky Trail Entertainment Grand Prix.

It hadn't taken much arm-twisting but we had a posse from Tamworth arrive late Friday after my JetBlack MTB Racing team mates had setup a prime transition position within the event centre.

After a distraught melancholy of overnight moos for those who camped at Kinross, race morning finally arrived, and it was a comfortable and mild. A caravan of cars with bikes attached started arriving and plenty of pre-race rituals were underway. The event centre went from ghost-town to down-town as the RedBull truck arrived and 3x3 shades rose from Kinross's reddish dirt.

As the countdown started, we lined up close to the front as to benefit from the short run into the single-track. It was a cracking start and while the pace was on, it felt good on legs that had seen plenty of kms over the Christmas break. Sitting behind Tamworth local and frother Justin Roberts, our pace solid over the first three laps. 

With a 2019 endurance result not to be scoffed at, we followed a pairs-team from Inverell for as long as we could. These young guys were blasting around the track and had sneaked slowly up on us, Justin couldn't take the pace, dropping off somewhere mid-forest. A couple of laps was all we could handle but this had brought us onto the wheel of a local, who was more of a match to our 4hr endurance pace.

Settled back into a sustainable pace we were caught by the leading 4hr, then eventually the leading 7hr riders. Jon Odams had the lead on Ben Fillingham as he flew by us, but a tyre issue saw Ben take the lead and complete the 4hrs first. Mick Sherwood was on a very good rolling pace when rolling with us, when we paused at transition to take on more water, Mick was up the hill and gone. Mick went on to win the 7hr.

Little did we know there was in-category rivalry as a quiet Matt Clutterham rolled behind us, returning to Grand Prix racing after a few years hiatus. Again we paused at transition to sort out our gear for the final laps and Matt slipped up the trail to take 2nd by a mere minute.

An awesome day on the trails of Kinross and a timely reminder of what cool trails we have on offer around our regional towns. Can't wait to race the next event, we'll see you there!

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Full results here.

National XCO Series Round 1 & 2

Photo: Iona Reynolds

Orange hosted the opening rounds of the MTBA 2017 XCO National Series over the weekend, with all participants facing hot, dry and dusty conditions at Kinross State Forest. The first time National Series hosts put together a couple of short and steep loops, reminiscent of old classic XC loops for both days.

With a number of local Sydney based riders attending, given the chance to race Kinross again and catch up with riders from other areas, we sealed our trip to Orange with the race fees. It was busy at Kinross when we arrived, the Juniors and older Masters were finishing their round 1 race. Rego was a breeze and we were able to watch the start of the Elite Woman.

There were a number of big names in mountain biking in attendance, across many of the categories and riders had come from almost all states to represent. Did that mean that all racing was fast and furious? Thankfully no, there was some breadth albeit just a handful.

Photo: Iona Reynolds

With any XCO racing it was super fast paced, probably something we could work on after all these years of endurance racing. Those who could punch up the climbs had the time wins, but the trails featured numerous great descents plus a number of rough blown-out ones, putting smiles on dials.

A sprint to the first section of singletrack initially sorted the groups out, particularly on Sunday when there were some already heavy legs. Flowing trail took us up to the large rock climb and from there the trail differed for the each round. Saturdays round included the longish quarts-climb, previously used in a Ginja Ninja (2015?). From there we connected up to some firetrail before the epically good North Shore trail back to transition.

On Saturday our pace wasn't super fast and over the four laps we managed to pull a few riders back from our grouping. The older categories were hot on our heel though and the fastest of them caught us and in a couple of cases, just powered away.

Photo: Russ Baker

Sunday's route took us up a few climbs that felt like we had never seen them on previous visits, after turning right at the rock climb we continued to climb for what seemed like forever, some gradual but most of it steep or pinchy. This trail was only completed three times for our category, where as Saturdays was four.

We had a good weekend in Orange and were pretty pleased with our first outing at National XCO level. Bec Henderson and Anna Bec won the womans elite rounds consecutively and Dan McConnell made it all look pretty easy in the elite mens.

They were long hot days in the sun and dust so a big shout-out to our JetBlack MTB Racing team mates and our support crews. See you all at the next event!