That Race 2012

The morning started slowly. I jumped out of bed late as per usual. Cruised down the coast a little to pick up my 10 hay bales from where they had been stored for the past week.

I then proceeded back home to grab the rest of the supplies and most of all my skateboard. 

As the day proceeded I was greeted with many of small speed bumps that would affect the way the day was to run. First of many...phone calls from grommets asking where everyone is and can they skate the hill three hours before scheduled meeting time. 

As I reached the hill, I was pleased to find no smelly grommets hanging around the hill, so I dropped off the hay bales and drove over to the meeting place. I arrived 45 minutes early to a car park filled with grommets keener than Dennis Ferguson at a primary school dance. 

I jumped out of the car and set up my laptop and started to skate around taking peoples names, constantly getting stopped in my tracks by small seed pods dropped from the trees surrounding the parking lot. 

As more and more keen skaters started to roll into the car park the stoke levels started to rise. As OG shredders Adam 'Yatedawg' Yates, Cameron Kite and Ben 'Benbro' Hay rolled in we quickly scooted over to the race hill to plan the course for the day. We discussed safety and speed as the two main objectives to control. We decided to create a small left-right-left section on the exit of the left hairpin. The tricky part was to keep solid exit speed out of the left hairpin as the exit was off camber and slightly rough so prone to long turning drifts.

With this sorted out we scooted back to the meeting place and ran a race meeting. Yatedawg stepped up to the plate to run the race meeting as he has a better understanding of grommets and they respect what he says a lot more. 

With the race meeting over we moved over to the race hill, set up the track for practice runs and then formulated the way the day was meant to be run...THIS DID NOT GO TO PLAN.

The track was set up and people informed to go to the top in small groups...NO MORE THEN 10 RIDERS at a time. But we had an influx of riders run to the top of the hill disregarding everything that had been said. I was very disappointed to see two experienced riders take off down the hill before the track had even been called green.

The BBQ was then fired up to provide people with food and drinks for the day, cooked by Mic Wildash. My dad only gets a few days off work every month as he works away, and he chose to come down to my race and help keep everyone fed for the day. I can't thank my dad enough.

After things got underway we managed to get through an hour and a half of practice runs. We moved into racing and with so many riders registering on the day and other riders that had registered not turning up, things yet again turned to absolute shit. We got to the end of round 1 and then eight people decided to come over and tell me they had not been put into the draw. After closer examination it was only four that had not been placed into the draw; the other four just chose not to listen for their names to be called to the line. 

With the draw being fixed and everything now going to plan, we moved through the race bracket, slowly but surely. There were some heats that had to suffer the walk back to the hill to be re-run as the track had been deemed unsafe to ride. There was an unfortunate heat that was run five times if my memory serves me correctly. 

As we got to the semi-finals things started to get a little hectic, with showers threatening and then the worst happened; it rained. There was a heat that got sent on a wet track, causing some upset in the riders. Unfortunately racing is racing and things played out how they did. 

Now this is where things get interesting. The finals. We had Cameron Kite, Chad Gibson, Simon Duber and grommet ripper Jordan Riachi. 

The finals were run and completed a day of epic racing. The BBQs were fired back up as the rider presentation was prepared, and with over 10 kilos of sausages being consumed on the day, I'd like to think everyone was well fed and had an epic day. 

The prizes were donated by:

• Slippery Dip Slide pucks
• Sector9 Skateboards
• Early Skateboards
• Daddow Skateboards/Kebbek.
• Heelside Magazine 

Without the kind hearts of these guys there wouldn't have been much to swag out. 

Special thanks to all the helpers, especially Juanita, Mic, Yatedawg, Lucas, Geoff, Davin and Arbi - without you guys there wouldn't have been a race. You guys are the foundations behind the day. I'm just the crazy kid that organised people to turn up.