Alpine Resorts Victoria would like to invite the Mansfield Mt Buller Cycling Club to an exclusive, pre-season ride day at Mt Buller, on Saturday 25 November.
In concert with our hardworking trail crew, Contour Works will be on site throughout November, revitalising crowd favourite trails ABOM and Gang Gangs. As well as broader reshaping and feature works. We'd love the help and support of your club, to test the new features with us, and ride-in the freshly completed works.
Members will be able to spend the day alongside our trail crew. Using the provided shuttles to access the full gravity network from 10am to 5pm. We have also arranged for the Kooroora Pub to provide a catered sausage sizzle lunch in a dedicated event space in the village plaza from 1pm.
Over lunch Contour Works will provide club members with the inside scoop on the works they will be undertaking over summer. David McCoombe (Danger) will also outline our long-term asset management plans for the trail network and how we intend to keep the trails in tip top shape moving forward. Club members are encouraged to ask as many questions as they’d like during this session.
Members are asked to RSVP using this link. This will help us ensure we have enough snags for lunch and can meet any special dietary needs.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me using this link. I look forward to working more closely with the club in the future and to making sure our broader Mansfield community sees Mt Buller and Mt Stirling as their mountains.
Kind regards,
Amanda Vogt
Head of Visitor Experience | Mt Buller Mt Stirling Resort Management, Alpine Resorts Victoria.
Tim Ross wins Alain’s race
By Allan Gerrans
It was good to see a strong field of 18 riders enter for one of the MMBCC’s longest and most important races. The Alain Guerin Memorial Handicap, held each year in memory of Alain, a respected club member who was tragically killed when hit by a vehicle whilst riding on the Mt Buller Road nine years ago.
The course started at the Botanic Park and out along the Whitfield Road to Sawpit Gully Road then returning to the Barwite Road, over the dreaded Coombesberg and finishing on Graves Road - a total of just over 32km.
The field was split into seven groups with 20 minutes separating first to last starters. Micala Jacobs was first off, followed four minutes later by John Eisner and Dave Jagger who were then followed by Ian Conrick, Steve Curnow and Allan Gerrans another two minutes behind.
Eisner and Jagger were caught by the Conrick group at the Broken River bridge. The new group of five worked well together to catch Jacobs at the turnaround.
It was after the turn that they finally had a good look at the distance to the groups chasing them.
A strong group of four riders, led by Tim Ross, looked likely to catch the leading group of five. But there was still a long gap between the Ross group and the three final three groups of nine riders.
Ross, Tim Hall and Adrian Dowd finally caught the group of five at the Barwite Road intersection. But an acceleration by the two Tims (Ross & Hall) caught the others by surprise and only Curnow and Gerrans were able to go wth them, leaving Jagger, Eisner, Conrick and Dowd behind.
Ross did most of the work along Barwite Road, helped very occasionally by Curnow and Gerrans, and eventually even left Hall behind after the turn onto Old Tolmie Road.
Meanwhile, the three Scratch riders, Jake Lay, Andy Garrett and Ruby Dobson, had worked their way past all the rest of the field, apart from the leading three.
Curnow dropped back on the way up the Coombesberg; Gerrans was dropped near the top. This left Ross to race to the finish alone.
Dobson and Lay deadheated for 4th (with the money for Fastest Time going to Jake because he turned up at the Mansfield Hotel for presentations) followed by Garrett, Ryder Chadd, Bruce Halket, Jagger and Conrick in 10th.
Many thanks to Mel, Janine, Tricia and Bocky for a safe and well-organised race. Thanks too go to John for standing in as Handicapper while Dave recovers - get well soon Dev!
After the race, we rode out to the ‘Ghost Bike’ on Mt Buller Road, marking the location of Alain’s incident, where we were met by Alain’s wife Coral.
Many thanks to Tony Copland for the pics (except the last one of Coral and Tim, thanks to Leonie McLaughlin) and here are the results.
Next week we turn our attention to the rolling hills of Howes Creek Road - entries via Entry Boss and bribes to the Handicapper on the quiet please!
