Pure Tasmania Wildside MTB
Tasmania’s Rowena Fry and Ben Mather Win Pure Tasmania WildsideMTB 2014
Wildside MTB / 28.01.2014
The 450 riders in Pure Tasmania Wildside MTB took advantage of a strong northerly tail wind and hard packed sand to fly down Ocean Beach during the final stage of the event. Launceston’s Ben Mather hit the beach first and held off strong attacks from race leader Mark Tupalski (ACT) and former title holder Adrian Jackson. Riding alone to the finish, Mather kept his challengers off his wheel and finished one minute and 12 second ahead of Tupalksi for the stage. This lead was enough to ensure victory by 8 seconds, with Mather delighted to win his first Wildside title.
In a close tussle to the line, Jo Bennett (WA) won the final Hell’s Gate stage by 4 seconds from Rowena Fry, however Fry’s lead was sufficient to secure the win. With a lead of nearly 3 minutes overall, Rowena Fry showed her strength across the range of terrain covered in Wildside in a very high quality women’s field.
Two intrepid unicyclists tackled Wildside for the first time, with World number 6, Jamey Mossengren (NSW) taking out the inaugural title, finishing ahead of many two-wheeled competitors.
Having started the event on Saturday at Cradle Mt at 5 degrees, the dramatic change to 33 degree heat in the long Hells Gates stage provided an additional challenge to competitors. After four days of racing on through the spectacular alpine country and rainforest of the West Coast, the 22km stage around Ocean Beach completed the journey from mountains to beach, with many competitors thrilled to have completed this icon mountain biking event.
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