Welcome Bay on track to host downhill champs

by Kelly Exelby | 2nd December 2009

Top-level downhill racing returns to the Western Bay early next year with confirmation Tauranga will host the penultimate round of the national series - although organisers are now in a race of their own to get the track completed on time.

Tim Lawton, who founded  Tauranga's Downhill Racing club a year ago, and chief track designer Scott McGregor have been busy working  with downhillers Asher Ellery, Anthony Gunter and Daniel Heads on the purpose-built track in Welcome Bay, spending weekends and two to three nights a week clearing a track.

"I've been on the look out for a year for a specific race venue and the landowners were sympathetic to what we wanted to achieve," Lawton said. "We only secured the venue 10 days ago so it's been full on into it since. It's a lot of work, with plenty still to be done."

Tauranga got the nod as the venue for the fifth round of the national downhill series late last week after Whakatane, which was to have hosted the February 12-13 event, pulled out.

Tauranga's round at the new 2Stage Bikes Mountainbike Park will be the penultimate round of the series, a week before the final race in Rotorua.

Mountainbike New Zealand's Chris Mildon said yesterday he was rapt with what Lawton and his Tauranga Downhill team had created after Whakatane's  exit.

"It's probably a year earlier than they'd planned but it's fantastic they've pulled it together so quickly because we're short of quality downhill venues in New Zealand."

Mildon hadn't visited the site but had seen photos of the track and liked what he saw. "It's got the right elevation and, once it's finished, will do exactly what everyone wants in a race course - a good staging area at the bottom, good roads and good terrain."

Mildon has promised a quality field, with up to 200 downhillers expected for the two-day event. Practice is on Friday, February 12, with two runs the next day - a seeding ride to determine start order followed by the one-off championship ride.

Attention to detail on the 2.5km-long track has been paramount. Starting 260m above sea level, riders will have panoramic views over the Western Bay of Plenty, although they won't have long to enjoy it before tearing off through free-flowing bush and pine forest, down a formed motocross track before hitting a flat pedal section. From there it's all downhill, negotiating steep switchbacks, bulging boulder sections and rocky crevasses, with a 2m-high timber gap jump
bringing the downhillers out into the finish section.

Lawton is planning three jumps across a giant berm and another three tabletop jumps in a natural ampitheatre before riders hit the finish chute, 23m above sea level.

It is expected the top riders will take 3 to 3 minutes to negotiate the steep, technical track.

 Heads, who finished eighth in the junior men's downhill at the world championships in Canberra in September, said the Welcome Bay track was potentially as gnarly as anything he'd encountered.

"Obviously we haven't ridden it fully yet but we've test ridden parts of it and it's got the best of everything - really technical, steep and fast," the Tauranga rider said.

They had a self-imposed deadline of Christmas to get the track finished. Lawton had spent the past year looking at the feasibility of resurrecting the Mauao downhill race, an event that dropped off the calendar four years ago, but believes the Welcome Bay track offers more.

"We looked at getting the Mount downhill back but there were too many environmental issues and restrictions - you'd just never get on there."

Mildon, too, is certain Lawton, McGregor and their small team are on to a winner.

"The Mount downhill became iconic and was a fantastic event for bringing the sport to the people, but from what I'm hearing and from the photos Tim has sent, they're quickly creating something that's a full-on downhill course."