Christchurch physiotherapist and former Otago Girls’ High School student and Otago Daily Times Class Act recipient Mary Gray, who claimed the Whaka 100 Marathon title last year, added the national short course title to her haul.
Gray edged out fellow Christchurch rider Amelie Mackay and hometown Rotorua rider Ruby Ryan in the sprint finish on Sunday.
Christchurch star Anton Cooper, who won his 11th national XCO title on Saturday, was too strong for Auckland’s Matthew Wilson, claiming the short track honours in a repeat of Saturday’s national championship.
The weekend of racing concluded with an exciting and challenging MTB Enduro Nationals which ran in combination with the Giant 2W Gravity Enduro run by the Rotorua MTB Club.
The championships comprised seven stages, with the experienced Rae Morrison claiming the elite women’s honours by a narrow margin, while outstanding international prospect Joe Millington dominated the elite men’s competition.
Downhill talent Kate Hastings won the opening three stages. She and Morrison recorded the same time on the fourth stage.
Morrison, now a fulltime technical coach for the LIV Factory downhill team, showed her experience to win the penultimate stage to reduce the margin to just one second going into the final stage.
Morrison edged ahead in the final stage to claim the national title.
The elite men’s competition seemed to be plain sailing for Millington.
After finishing 11th in the UCO Enduro World Series in Europe last year, Millington started strongly to win the opening four stages and open a 15sec advantage over Tauranga’s Asher Hart.
However, Hart grabbed 10sec back on the fifth stage to close the margin, with Millington recovering to be fastest by stage six and both recorded the same time on the final sprint stage.
Millington claimed the honours by 11sec from Hart. Rotorua’s Daniel Self was third.
