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Rain, Hail, I thought we were in a Drought!!

Andy Fellows / 01.05.2007

On the drive out there the sky opened up, and the crew got hit by the heaviest rain that Queensland has experienced for months, it eased up as we pulled into the Resort. The storm had hit Kooralbyn hard; the trees had been stripped of leaves and there marble size hail stones in the garden.

This rain/hail was great! It helped settle the dust and packed a real smooth, fast racing surface. For those of you who don’t know the circuit at Kooralbyn it’s about a 11km loop taking the top guys around 30 minutes to complete. The first half of the lap is energy sapping! It includes some ‘nice’ climbs which eventually lead into some sweet flowing single track, only to hit a creek and a solid granny ring climb; from there it only gets better! Some more single track leads to a switchback ascent and a well earned rest on a superb technical descent back to the village.

As we lined up for the start which was an awful run into a tight bottle neck, I noticed a few other single digit racers. I think there were about 40 of us lining up solo. The gun went off and it was chaotic, people everywhere, I am sure I wasn’t the only one to get caught in a bike tangle. A mere 2 hours later, I heard a voice hustling from behind, it was team ‘Race Element/ For The Riders’ and after a quick chat and pump up he was gone. Credit goes to those boys who eventually took line honours with a thumping 48 laps! After a solid afternoon the sun disappeared behind the hills of the Kooralbyn Valley and darkness set in.

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