The Crocodile Trophy

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Riders and Roos

By John-Michael Flynn at Blencoe Falls. Photos Mark Watson. / 22.10.2005

In his days as a professional cyclist with Team Telekom, Kai Hundertmark would have suffered many a long lonely day off the front of the race peloton.

But nothing could have prepared the Felt-Shimano Dream Team cyclist for today’s epic stage four of the Crocodile Trophy, when the enduring German power house rode virtually from start to finish in a two man breakaway through a soggy Australian Outback.

Along the way Hundertmark had to confront many obstacles - Slippery muddy tracks, creek crossings, the humid heat and even a lightning storm – but nothing compared to what the eventual stage winner experienced a few kilometres from the finish line.

“I saw a whole family of kangaroos, a mother and three kids sitting completely across the road,� Hundertmark recalled of his Outback experience.

“When I come closer I saw they were real and they looked really also astonished like me, because I was the first mountain biker they saw.�

If the kangaroo and her joeys could talk, they would have told the German he was ‘home and hosed’ as Australians would say.

As by the time Hundertmark was within reach of the finish, his fellow competitors, including breakaway partner Austrian Markus Eibegger, had vanished into the vast expanse of Australia’s inland.

“It was another long day in the outback,� Hundertmark said.

“In the beginning I was a little bit angry because I was attacking a couple of times and they went with me and they weren’t pulling, so I decided to attack harder.�See All Event Posts