Kanga Valley Karnage!

like a fine curry, skateboard races seem to be better the second time around.

nestled in the picturesque Kangaroo valley region, tucked away from the hustle and bustle lies a patch of butter-smooth road with a decent downhill gradient that weaves and winds it's way down to a ridiculous hairpin and then on to a free campsite, could there be a better spot for an outlaw!

i was planning to leave canberra early, get up to the campsite and skate all afternoon, get as much practice in as i could before the race on sunday, this failed and i didn't get there till 3.30. i decided to skate down a hill on the way there (it hurts to drive down sweet hills) got all leathered up and phsyched, pushed off only to pass an oncoming policeman! i jumped back in the follow car and thought we got away with it, but sure enough after a minute the red and blue pulled us over and gave us a very stern talking to. poor old cop was beside himself!

so lesson learned. don't skate before an outlaw!

after this we got to the race hill had a run and set up camp. the sydney guys were already there, seshing the hill.

i didn't get any photo's or footage of the campsite, but it truely is a fantastic spot, it's down by a river and there's heaps of wildlife, wombats, kangaroos, kookaburra's etc and they're all really tame!

other then us and a handful of grey nomads, the campsite was deserted. a good sign for the race the next day.
after partying on around our 'cooking' fire we went to bed and woke to this

a perfect crisp winter morning

after breakfast and morning prayers, riders who were to soft to handle a night in the wild started to trickle in and it was on!

cam preparing for his 'clean sweep'

sophia showing the groms how to sweep a corner

the road was wet, it didn't really dry all day, this made for interesting racing. The top bit of the track is sweepers and on a dry day you tuck and rail and it's fairly easy, but on this day you tucked and 'gingerly' railed those corners!

coming in way to hot!

see, wear your helmets kids! (i owe you owen!)
that's the top bit, on to the crazy hairpin. you pretty much have to scrub 40+km's of speed before the corner to make it around, and the crew were killing it pretty much everyone (except for myself cause i'm a girl) was pulling massive checks and getting around the corner with style.

special mention has to go out to the grom 'Kelly', he was the most stylish kid on that corner, and was overtaking dudes sliding around the outside! crazy stuff!

alex haggy and owen sliding into the corner

now imagine if scott was wearing a g-string!
after a few practice runs, we started the race, we did a kind of round robin thing where we had a bunch of four man heats trying to make sure everyone raced everyone else at least once. you got points for each run depending where you placed. everyone was racing hard, i have to say the level of riding has gone up in leaps and bounds since the last race, dudes were shreading!

look at the poise! Steve Daddow came down to race on his 39th birthday, that's dedication to the scene!!! we had a cake, it was rad.

steazy Alex leading some tight racing, it was hectic when the pack was tight coming into the hairpin

owen and cam battling it out
after the round robin we stopped for a snag and drink and tallied up the results

the top eight were seeded into semifinals. cam and daddow were seeded equal top it was going to be close!
after the semifinals, there was a consolidation round to get 5th to 8th place.
steve, cam owen and cooper made it into the final.

it was tight racing all the way down the course, owen crashed out on the straight before the hairpin and daddow came in a bit to hot and was pipped by cam with cooper coming in third.


after the finals we headed down to the campsite for prizes and product toss

the podium, cam gets his name on the perpetual trophy
1st Cameron
2nd Steve
3rd Cooper
4th owen
5th Henry
6th Kelly
7th Alex
8th Haggy

oh, and dave smashed the luge category took out 1st, 2nd and 3rd!

massive thanks to the marshals and chris for driving all day couldn't have done it without you guys.
also huge thanks to hopkin racing, adrenaline plus and glyde/steve for all the product and prizes, there was around $1800 worth of gear! support the guys who support you, buy from these guys!!
congrats to the winners everyone was killing it, next one is gonna be bigger and better again!
it was rad to see the groms stepping it up!



p.s i'd encourage anyone thinking about putting a race on to just do it, it'd be rad to get an Aussie circuit set up!
peace