INVERELL mountain bike rider Brad Newman and Moree’s Trent Loader managed a narrow second place with 5 hours 17:46 minutes in the Male Pairs section of The Dubbo 300, the fifth leg of the Evocities MTB series, on Sunday, July 19.
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Newman and Loader raced as the ‘Chafing the dream’ team.
One hundred and ten cyclists took part in the five hour event, which was supported by Fairfax Media and hosted by the Dubbo Mountain Bike Club and held on a 16 kilometre track near the Macquarie River at Geurie.
“We started the day with a couple of incidents in the first lap,” Newman said.
“We got a flat tyre and we had to fight back for the five hours. We were sitting in third place during most of the day. We got back up into second position on the second last lap.
“It was a pretty close race right through. Between us and first place it was averaged up to 31 seconds difference, and it was only nine seconds back to third, so it was pretty close. It was quite a challenging track, a bit of a mix of everything.”
Newman said there were some top level riders contesting the event, including five times world champion Jason English in the Open section.
A member of the Inverell Mountain Bike Club, Newman said he had trained hard for the event.
“There’s some pretty good competitions here,” he said.
“There’s the Northern Inland Series that runs around this area, with some good top level riders around this area.”
Newman said his event was sponsored by WD40, so they had received quite a lot of product and $120 cash for their effort.
“So it was worth the trip. It helped pay for a bit of fuel,” he said with a laugh.
Newman is sponsored by Arthur Barker from SportsPower, who said Newman was a good ambassador for Inverell.
“He’s getting good results in the G Pack Series and the Northern Inland Series, he’s doing really well,” Barker said.
“The Mountain Bike Club is a good thing for this area. More and more people are getting involved with mountain biking now. It must be safer than being on the road.”