Families, costumes, fake blood, and African drumming made for an entertaining combination at this year’s 6 Hour Midwinter Breakout.
The fun, annual mountain biking race gave 299 riders the chance to dress up, jump on their bikes and ride around Rabbit Island for six whole hours.
“I’ve run seven events now and I would say that was the best one we’ve had, everybody had a good time and really enjoyed it,” says event organiser Wayne Pool, who spared some time and snuck in a few cheeky rides. “We built some new trails and reversed last year’s track and it worked really well.”
The group of riders were made up of all ages and stages, with one competitor who was over 60 riding out to the event from Nelson, biking the whole race solo, and then biking home again.
And the young ones participated too, with Nelson Intermediate awarded $500 to put towards sports equipment after having the highest number of teams entered from a single school.
However, the biggest prize of the day went to the best-dressed Rainbow Warriors Katie Gold, Lynley Chisnall, Bin Heaphy, and Deb Hughes, who won a $500 Vic Brew Bar voucher for their yellow wigs, tinsel covered helmets, stripy capes, and shiny accessories.
Wayne says the women were stand outs and really got into the idea of the Midwinter Breakout.
“The day is all about fun so we don’t give out performance prizes, we give out a few thousand dollars worth of spot prizes and a prize for the best-dressed team and these ladies really got into the spirit of things.”
Also dressed up was Team Concussion who were covered in convincing fake blood and raffled off mountain biking gear to raise $735 for the Nelson Marlborough Rescue Helicopter who get called out around the region to rescue injured mountain bikers.
A new addition to the race this year were the In Rhythm African drummers who spurred along everyone when they hit the inevitable exhaustion near the end of the race.
Another highlight of the day was when Henry Jaine rode the whole six hours solo and ahead of the pack.
“He was winning the race on his own, right until the last lap when he was passed just before the finish by Team Skoda Racing, he managed to stay ahead of the fast four-person team until the last few minutes,” says Wayne.
“To ride that on your own for six hours is really quite phenomenal.”
In addition to being first among the solo men and second overall, Henry did the fastest lap, taking 14.45 minutes to do what the average person was riding in 25 minutes.
