Shane Gillett and Stephanie Jackson take over elite series leads

Round 4 of the Fox Rollercoaster Superflow Series, sealed by Stan's brought almost 200 racers to the popular Central Coast mountain bike trail network at Ourimbah MTB Park near Wyong. Jon Odams and Lucy Mackie from Sydney took out the elite wins, clocking in the overall fastest times on the three race tracks. Local club racer Shane Gillett took over the elite series lead on his home track and Stephanie Jackson from Drummoyne is the new elite women's series leader with two more series races and a Championship event coming up this year.

After a freezing morning, the Fox Rollercoaster Superflow racers at Ourimbah were treated to a perfect winter racing day on the Central Coast. The Rocky Trail crew had put up three race tracks on the home track of the local Central Coast Ourimbah Mountain Bike Club.

Their unique racing format attracted 200 riders from all over NSW and the ACT - originally based on the popular overseas enduro events, these Rocky Trail races have competitors ride to the starts of three to four race tracks in neutral and then complete those as fast as they can. The combined times count towards the final result.

"What makes our races so unique is that we don't squeeze our competitors into tight start order schedules and time cut-offs. We can offer an awesome day out to a wide range of riders - from elite to amateur racers to families, couples and groups of friends riding together", explains Race Director Martin Wisata from Rocky Trail.

He explained that with a unique and flexible timing system, the events didn't require any start orders and riders could also pick the sequence in which to complete the timed race stages. That way, riders of different categories could still spend all day riding and racing together. "That all makes it a really social affair", Wisata added.


Social, yes. Slow, no. : Gillett and Jackson take over series leads
To notice that the Fox Rollercoaster Superflow races give the riders a proper adrenaline rush, one only has to be at the timing hub, which is the centre of all activity once racing has started from midday. With three live race tracks, all eyes at Ourimbah were on the local gun Brock Newling who clocked in the fastest race time on one of them, taking four seconds of Sydney's mountain bike all-rounder Jon Odams. After a nasty crash, however, Newling suffered a broken wrist and had to retire from the race.

So it was his fellow club racer, Shane Gillett from Lake Haven, who was to take on Odams. With one ex aequo race time, Odams shaved 2 seconds off Gillett's time and took the win in 9:33 minutes and Daniel Chiarelli came in third (+12 sec). Gillett is now the overall series leader ahead of Newling and Ben McCarthy from Canberra.

In the women's Stephanie Jackson took over the series lead with a third spot behind Sydney's Lucy Mackie who clocked in a time of 12:14 minutes, winning with a gap of 13 seconds ahead of Mel Hayes from Hornsby.