McAvoy and Hall hold on to win 2011 Terra Australis

Canberra pair Jason McAvoy and Andrew Hall have held on in a highly competitive final stage of the 2011 Terra Australis to record a fantastic victory in their first attempt at the event.

The stage was won by the Adam Kelly and Simon Easy (BSS Rangas) who dominated on the singletrack around Beechworth to record their first stage victory of the event. The red heads from Red Hill have been very consistent all week and their stage victory was a popular victory amongst the rest of the competitors.

The village of Beechworth has a rich cultural history and the bearded Adam Kelly could quite easily pass as a blood relative of his more famous namesake, Ned.

The final stage shaped as a crucial stage with three sections of singletrack and fast fire roads in between. Kelly and Easy rode the singletrack to perfection and were able to create and sustain such a significant breakaway that they moved into third in the overall general classification.

Their main rivals, Team Brave (Brad Hawthorn and David Evenden) struggled on the singletrack and finished 13:56 behind the BSS Rangas, thus relegating them to 6th in the general classification. Rollin Thunder (Adrian Scott and Gavin Rumbles) moved ahead of Team Brave into 4th place and Team Torq (Mark Fenner and Jo Wall) moved into 5th.

The overall general classification winners, McAvoy and Hall rode strongly to hold their well deserved lead to finish 12:23 in front of Yeti Gu and BSS Rangas in third. The focus for McAvoy and Hall now moves to the National 24 Hour Championships.

The 2011 Terra Australis was a highly competitive event with four separate stage winners. The racing was on all week and the competitors battled through the first ever wet stage of the Terra as they circumnavigated Mount Buffalo. At the start of the week it was decided that each night a ‘harden up’ award would be presented.

By the end of stage one the award had been renamed to ‘soften up’ such was the lengths that people were going to in order to get through.

Terra Australis is a tough race and for that reason not everyone can do it. Those that completed the event found it pushed them to and beyond their limits. The team format means that for some competitors they needed to push through when they would normally back off in order to maintain contact with their teammate.

The camaraderie amongst the competitors once again defined the event with many tales of people lending assistance and equipment to other competitors.

For full results including GC stage and category winners as well as overall standings please go to http://www.terraaustralismtbepic.com/