From Ted Jones, Marketing and Events Manager for BikeNZ and responsible for the NZ MTB National Series.

Of particular interest to Australian riders are those races on the UCI calendar that are eligible for UCI points. These are Dunedin, Auckland, Rotorua and Colville.

The full Series schedule is:

The 2004 part of the 2004-2005 national MTB season concluded with an awesome 330 riders at Thredbo. The national season is now half over and it is time to reflect on how all the participants have performed. The latest rankings are available at https://www.mtba.org.au/results/menu.asp and click through to National XC or DH pages.

Here are the answers to two commonly asked questions about the ranks.

Q. Why aren't all of my race results appearing?

A. There are a few possible reasons for this:
• Check through the rankings and check for your name being spelt incorrectly.
• Check the results of the missing race to make sure that you are recorded as a finisher.
• Check the class entered and make sure that all of your ranks are in the same class.

If any of these are the reason for your result not being ranked please contact MTBA.
If you can’t find your result rank and feel that you should be ranked at a particular event please contact MTBA.
Please note that MTBA will not transfer ranking points from one class to another.

Q. How are the rankings calculated?

A. Please read the MTBA members handbook that gives the rankings technical table. Each place in a race is awarded points and the points are accumulated over the entire series. All races count.

The final round (12-13 March 2005) of the National XC and DH will be staged again at Mt. Buller just one week before the National Championships in Eildon. This is a great opportunity to have a week away mountain biking in the Victorian Highlands with Eildon only an hour or so away from Buller.

For accommodation bookings at Mt. Buller ring 1800 039 049. Stay tuned for some great accommodation packages in Mt. Buller early in the new year.

Accommodation information is also available for the nationals at:
Alexandra Visitor Information Centre 1800 652 298 (Eildon, Thornton & Alexandra Accommodation)
Marysville Visitor Information Centre 03 5963 4567 (Marysville, Yea & Kinglake Accommodation)

Both Visitor Information Centres are open 7 days a week, 9am-5pm.

The entry forms and event details for first two rounds of the MTBA national MTB series in 2005 are now available. The entry form for Lithgow (DH#3) is available in the calendar pages of the MTBA website and additional information is also available at http://www.ctmbc.net/Pages/Temps/natdh.html.

Information about the Tour de Dirt in Canberra is available as a downloadable form in the MTBA calendar section and entry is available on-line at http://www.corc.asn.au.

The national MTB series primer has been updated with details for DH#3 and XC#4 and is available here.

A two stage race over a weekend around Beechworth in North-East Victoria was the setting for Round # 3 of the National XC series. Saturday's event was a race to ride the 43km course of fire trails and dirt roads with 980 metres of descending and climbing, before the thunderstorms hit ! Early on in the race, 3 riders- Chris Jongewaard, Peter Hatton and Murray Spink broke away from the main pack and stayed together, fighting it out until the very end. The last 4km was a fast downhill section on a narrow fire trail with lots of water bars and little surprises. Chris Jongewaard's held on in a tight sprint to the finish line to win by a mere 2 seconds over Peter Hatton with Murray Spink only 8 seconds off the pace.

Sunday's racing was an entirely different course at the Beechworth Mountain Bike Park. A stark contrast to Saturday's race course, Sunday's racing sorted the roadies out from the mountain bikers ! This was a 6km loop of technical singletrack with rocky sections, berms, jumps and even a large North Shore ramp to ride over. The Elite Men had a tough challenge ahead of them having to do 6 laps (36km in all) of the 90% singletrack course. Chris Jongewaard dominated the weekend's racing, winning stage 2 in Elite Men by 37 seconds over Dylan Cooper followed by Alistair Farley. It should be noted that of Chris Jongewaard's six laps, his fatest lap was 20min7sec and his slowest lap was only 26 seconds longer at 20min31sec. The fastest lap of the day, however, was Dylan Cooper's last lap - the only sub-20min lap at 19.52!

Well done to the 110 odd riders who raced both days- a challenging couple of days.

Full results (https://www.mtba.org.au/results/national.asp?StrContCategory=National%20Cross%20Country) and XC ranks (https://www.mtba.org.au/calendar/docs/xc_ranking.pdf) after 3 rounds are now available.

With the 2005 National Championships just a few short months away you may need to start thinking about accommodation. Eildon still has a large amount of accommodation available over the period of the event - although I would imagine that after Christmas this will start to fill quickly!!!

Two information centres are available this year:

Alexandra Visitor Information Centre 1800 652 298 (Eildon, Thornton & Alexandra Accommodation)
Marysville Visitor Information Centre 03 5963 4567 (Marysville, Yea & Kinglake Accommodation)

Both Visitor Information Centres are Accredited and therefore open 7 days a week, 9am-5pm.

Why not look at the other things you can do while your loved ones are at the Nats.

Have a look at:

> Murrindindi Shire Council www.murrindindi.vic.gov.au
> Murrindindi Regional Tourism www.murrindinditourism.com.au

> Eildon www.lakeeildon.com
> Lake Eildon www.visitlakeeildon.com
> Lake Mountain www.lakemountainresort.com.au
> Marysville www.marysvilletourism.com
> Kinglake/ Yea www.visitkinglakeranges-yea.com.au
> Upper Goulburn Experience - Food Wine & Culture www.uge.asn.au

> High Country Adventure www.highcountryadventure.info

MTBA has updates its list of nationally significant MTB events for 2005 and early 2006.

It is available at http://ical.mac.com/mtba/MTBA as html or if you use Apple's iCal program you can subscribe to it through webcal://ical.mac.com/mtba/MTBA.ics

If you find any errors or omissions please let MTBA know by sending an email to us. If you wish an event to be added please let us know.

The calendar is automatically updated and so should form a useful resource for event promoters and participants alike.

A measure of the penetration of the info.mtba email address into the general community can perhaps be measured by the number of emails purportedly sent from us to unsuspecting recipients. Usually these emails are poorly constructed, have some trivial subject line and unfortunately they usually contain a computer virus.

If you get such an email please be assured that it did not originate from us, nor from our server. Our email address has been spoofed by a virus infecting another computer which then searches the microsoft outlook email database, selects the info.mtba email address at random, and then sends itself to all the other email addresses in the database using the MTBA address as the 'from' email address.

As with all spurious emails you should not allow your computer email program to automatically open attachments on the email's receipt nor should you do so. Trash any suspected email.

Cycling Australia has recently announced an updated anti-doping policy that takes effect from 1st December 2004.

It has implications for asthmatics, diabetics and athletes who must use other banned substances or procedures for medical reasons. It also changes the rules for notification of wherabouts for riders listed to be tested regularly.

Read these documents in the Policy pages at https://www.mtba.org.au/general/policies.asp