Cousine wins Wellington round of NZ MTB Cup downhill

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The Long Gulley race course in Brooklyn has a long pedigree of racing at a national level and always provides challenging and variable conditions to add to the challenge of one of the fastest and shortest courses on the national circuit. Weather did play its part, but stayed largely settled for both days of practice and competition to give a dry, dusty and fast platform for what turned out to be incredibly close racing across all categories.

The elite women's race delivered another win for Lower Hutt's Sarah Atkin. Fresh off winning the national championships, Atkin was never threatened on her home course and she posted a race time that had daylight back to the rest of the field.

The elite men's race turned up some real surprises. Several visiting international athletes joined the NZ MTB Cup series in Wellington to sharpen up their race fitness before the 2012 World Cup series begins in the middle of March.

The elite men's field contained riders from nine different countries, giving New Zealand's athletes a serious challenge on their home turf. Fabian Cousinie (France) provided the real excitement with a seeding result at number three. Even then, the local crowd wasn't prepared to accept the possibility that a visiting international would win at Long Gulley, but that is exactly the scenario that played out in the afternoon race run.

Cousinie raced a flawless run to win from NZ MTB Cup leader Brook MacDonald (Napier) by less than half a second. MacDonald's 2012 World Cup teammate also nearly got the better of him, but the slimmest of margins (1/100th of a second) had Markus Pekoll (Austria) back in third spot. The rest of the elite men's podium were two seconds further back, Richard Leacock and Bryn Dickerson (both Wellington) not able to turn a home track advantage to their benefit, but doing more than enough to head the rest of the field.

Across the age group categories the form NZ MTB Cup riders all shone. Louis Hamilton (Rotorua) in the U19 juniors, Josh McCombie (Dunedin) in the U17 juniors, Carl Edmondson (Whakatane) in senior, Jamie Nicoll (Nelson) and Darryn Henderson (Christchurch) in the masters all took wins this week in Wellington.

The Downhill NZ MTB Cup will wrap up this weekend February 24-26 in Napier, New Zealand.

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