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By Kath Gannaway
A YEAR of hard slog by members of the Fat Tyre Flyers Mountain Bike Club paid off on the weekend when their Longgully Road track in Chum Creek was re-opened after the Black Saturday fires.
The club caters for the fast-growing sport of down-hill BMX competition, and the mountain ridge along Longgully Road provides the perfect launching pad for the downhill and the dual slalom tracks.
Club spokesman Stuart Winton said the club drew members from all over Victoria but the majority were from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
When fires raced across from Yarra Glen on 7 February, 2009, they swept across the grasslands at the base of the mountain range and pushed up over the ridge destroying all the tracks.
“It’s taken a year for us to make all the tracks safe again,” Mr Winton said. “Before then we were holding fun and competition days regularly out here,” he said.
The sport is extreme, requiring skill, courage, a bit of cash and, for young people, parents who were prepared to be involved.
The riders are shuttled to the top of the hill and it’s all down hill from there.
“It’s more an exercise in control of speed, so it’s very much like downhill skiing,” Mr Winton said.
Being a little crazy may help.
Riders come hurtling from the top, on the main bush track negotiating bends and bumps as they launch off the first jump, flying through the air and building speed on the downhill run as they approach the final jump and gully before shooting back to level ground.
Most the riders are in their teens, but they are starting younger according to Mr Winton who said an eight year old recently completed the full competition track at Mt Beauty.
“You generally don’t have the strength or the courage to do the downhill track until about 13, and you can ride right through to the supermasters. We still have a couple of guys at 50 still riding,” Mr Winton said.
For some the sport is just great, daring fun, but for others the aim is to compete at the elite level with the World Championships the ultimate goal.
Having the Longgully track back up and running is a step further toward that goal for members of the Fat Tyre Flyers.
