MOUNTAIN BIKING:A record number of Wanganui secondary school mountain bikers are expected to join hundreds of mountain bikers from all corners of New Zealand at Levin today and tomorrow. The event is the national secondary schools' mountain bike championships under-19 seniors, under-16 intermediate and under-14 juniors will be challengingfor titles in their respective age groups to see who is the champion overall at crosscountry, uphill and downhill disciplines. Wanganui Collegiate School, Wanganui High School, Wanganui City College, Cullinane College will be strongly represented, boasting national championships. Barring mechanical failure Sam Blinkensop (Wanganui High School) must be hot favourite to take out the under-19 boys downhill title while Joel Daniels has to head-off Eddie Masters (Collegiate) and David Scandrett (Christchurch) for the intermediate boys' title. It is unfortunate due to costs that some prominent South Island mountain bikers are not able to travel to Levin this year. Wanganui's Aden Brown, Adam Lourie, Kyle Butters, Tom Oskam, Kane Alabaster, Ian Thurlow, Matt Camwell, Scott McDowell, Ben Simkin, Mo Monk, B Winter, Isaac Kennard, Jerram Tuck, K Crawford, Robbie Macauly, S Oskam, J Campbell, D Molan and C Johnson are all capable of top performances. Tomas Cantillon and Matthew Chesswas will be taking a well earned overseas holiday. Twenty-four downhill mountain bikers contested the Wangas three play events in testing conditions at Lismore Forest last Sunday. The mass start race had to be abandoned for safety reasons. Sam Blenkinsop (4 min 39.9s) headed Glenn Haden (4 min 44.7s) for the combined quickest times down both Humpty Dumped Me and Terra Firma tracks. Eddie Masters took out the under-17 event in 5 min 22.4s, Ian Thurlow was first of the under-15's in 5 mins 47.7 secs and Joel Daniels 2nd in the under-19. Full results on http:www.mountainbike.co.nz/clubs/wanganui. Upcoming events: Downhill trainer day, Monday April 25. Thursday April 28 annual meeting and prizegiving, 7.30pm at RSA, St Hill St.
