Outer Edge Magazine

In the midst of the Tasmanian wilds, a veteran mountain bike rider and former Olympian teaches his young cousin how to tame a dragon.

If you pause even for a moment in the ancient rainforests that line much of the route of The Blue Dragon Challenge in North East Tasmania, you can almost feel the huge Myrtle and Sassafras trees breathing in the cool air.

Birds chatter across the treetops, a stream bubbles away somewhere below you, and the green – an intense, rich green, broken only by the shafts of dappled sunlight penetrating to the forest floor – seeps into your soul and puts you at ease as if you’re in a natural cathedral.   

And then you’re jolted by shouting, a flash of Lycra and the thunder of approaching knobbly wheels being pedalled furiously by a herd of intense mountain bikers. The solitude is shattered and you remember that, like them, you’re here for a race rather than a picnic.

THE BLUE TIER IS BREATHTAKINGLY BEAUTIFUL, but with 350 rough riders descending on the place for two days of gruelling enduro racing, the last weekend in January is hardly the best time to be seeking serenity here.

That is, of course, unless you’re among the lead riders, who spend much of the race in near solitude, methodically negotiating the terrain and clicking through the kilometres on their way to the podium.

Even those elite riders out front in the Blue Dragon Challenge, however, won’t find themselves completely alone in the wilderness as the race requires riders to race in pairs, promoting teamwork, cooperation and a shared experience.

And this year, way out at the front of the pack, was a duo that on the face of things seemed quite unlikely. Five-time National Mountain Bike Champion and Athens’ Olympian Sid Taberlay had teamed up with his 15-year-old cousin, Ben Bradley, to form a partnership where it might appear that Taberlay was being charitable at best.

But they came in second on both days in a highly competitive field and only found themselves on the second step of the podium because of the efforts of a couple of blow ins – top national riders Peter Hatton and Neil van der Ploeg.

Reports from the front of the race suggest that, on day one at least, Hatton and van der Ploeg were possibly even slightly rattled by the efforts of the 15 year old, resorting to ‘attacking’ the junior in an effort to wear him down.

“The boys [Peter and Neil] were a little surprised at how well Ben climbed and had to resort to race tactics,” says Blue Dragon organiser and champion XC rider Ben Mather. “For someone who is 15 years old to climb as well as he did for as long as he did took them back a bit I think.”

Cousin Sid was also suitably impressed with the efforts of his young cousin in-law: “His trick was that he hung with Pete and Neil for three quarters of the 23km climb,” Taberlay tells me. “He stayed with them for 15km, which was the first 50 minutes or so, then those guys started winding it up trying to get rid of him but he managed to hang in there. And then they started attacking him. I found it quite amusing that two national-level riders were attacking a fifteen year old.”

BUT BEN BRADLEY HASN’T SIMPLY materialised at the head of the mountain biking pack. Inspired and mentored by his elder cousin, he has been climbing through the ranks of junior mountain biking for some time. He won the Under-15 national title in 2009 and is the current leader of the Under-17 national series.

Sid was there when a 12-year-old Ben decided that he wanted to give Hobart’s Mount Wellington Challenge a crack. A road time trial that climbs a total of 1144 metres over a distance of 21km to the pinnacle of Hobart’s biggest landmark, the Mount Wellington Challenge is not for the faint hearted, nor the average 12 year old.

“He just decided that he wanted to get up it,” remembers Sid. “It was a bit of a battle to try to get the whole family to say yes, but we put up the argument that if he blows up he only has to turn around and roll back down and they were all fine with that.

“Much to everyone’s surprise, he actually made it, and although it was the first time he’d done any distance he did it in one hour and 45 minutes, which is pretty impressive.”

Before long Ben turned to fat tyres and steered his steed off the road and into the bush, hot on the heels of his idol, Sid. These days the two train together both on and off the road, whenever Sid – who now lives in LA with his wife – is back in Australia.
“Having Sid as a mentor has provided great moral support for Ben,” says Mather.
“They ride together as often as possible, with young Ben’s wheel dutifully following Sid’s, providing the kind of training opportunities that most of us could only dream about.”

Actually racing together, however, was a new experience and one that Sid felt was enormously beneficial to Ben’s riding.

“It was good riding with Ben, encouraging him to keep his head on, keep pedaling and being able to help him when he was making silly mistakes”, says Sid. “Racing in pairs promotes teamwork. I can ride with Ben but you don’t often get to race together, so I could point out what he’s doing wrong and how to improve things which you don’t do when you’re just out riding. In that sense you can be more of a mentor in this kind of event and help more than if you were just out training.”

That’s all good and well but how does a 15 year old, many peers of whom would be more comfortable in front of an X-Box, stay on the wheel of a world-class cross-country rider? Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to take on a shorter race together first, rather than a double 50km marathon that includes three gruelling mountain climbs in two days?

Sid scoffs at this suggestion: “He was fine with the Blue Dragon. Ben’s just got that hard-arse mentality – he gives everything a crack and wants to impress.”

The opportunity wasn’t lost on Ben either. “I feel privileged I suppose,” he grins.
“And very happy. I never expected we’d be this high [in the field] and a 50km race is not really my thing.”

Sid has obviously known about his cousin’s potential for some time, but now the cat is well and truly out of the bag. Eventual winners Peter Hatton and Neil van der Ploeg came away very impressed with Ben’s riding.

“We thought, ‘He’s only a sub-junior rider, we should be able to take care of him,’” admits Hatton. “But it was a long climb and they were pushing us so hard, and while we thought we could ride away a lot easier we had to give it everything to dislodge them, which we only did two or three kilometres below the summit.

“At the end of day one, Neil and I were talking and wondering how old he was.
We thought if he’s 17 he’s old enough to be going that well, but if he’s 16, that’s pretty young. Then we found out he’s 15, and we were like ‘Wow!’”

Despite Ben’s obvious talent and potential, and his eagerness to do well, Sid is super keen to make sure that he keeps on track.

“He’s going alright, it’s just a matter of keeping it fun while he’s that age, so he doesn’t go off the rails,” Sid stresses. “You see so many kids go from juniors to under 23s and then kind of fall out. So we’ve got to make sure he keeps it fun, stays interested and keeps going forward.”
FUN IS THE PRIMARY MOTIVATION for the vast majority of riders competing in, or just completing, the Blue Dragon Challenge. By the time the likes of me pass over the trails, the tyre marks of Hatton and Van Der Ploeg, and Taberlay and Bradley, are well erased so we might as well enjoy ourselves.

And fun it is. With many kilometres of challenging and sweet singletrack, the race route traverses several passes and high plateaus, crosses countless creeks, takes riders down technically demanding granite descents and through that sublime rainforest. The Blue Dragon is an adventure as much as it is a race…but there’s no avoiding the pain.
Centred around the old tin-mining community of Derby (day one) and the ultra cute hamlet of Weldborough (day two) the Blue Dragon’s course winds it’s way up and over sections of the Blue Tier mountain range no less than three times.

Day one alone involves a 20km long ascent from 150 metres above sea level to 910 metres. And day two pushes riders’ mental fortitude to the limit, the route starting with a climb up a trail known as the Blue Tier Descent to around 800 metres, before dropping down into the valley and then beginning the climb all over again, along a dirt road this time, to the top of the tier once more.

Many competitors name this climb as their moment of greatest mental and physical anguish during the race, as they relentlessly grind their way up the dirt road to the top of the Blue Tier.

Those gruelling climbs shine even further light on the efforts of the leaders and young Ben – who, with Sid, completed day two in the blistering time of 2 hours and 51 minutes, still 18 minutes behind the winners, but a whopping 4 hours and 54 minutes ahead of the “Dinosaur” duo of John Brown and Stephen Watchorn who were last to cross the line.

But the social atmosphere of the event, promoted further by racing in pairs, seems to make all the pain worthwhile. Riders talk amongst each other on track and it is common to see those in distress being helped out by other, and often much faster, riders.

It’s competitive, in that riders will rage running battles with those around them, but there is room for plenty of laughs, especially since you must cross the line together, as a pair.

The only time my partner Jimmy was behind me, for example, was when he was helping another rider repair a puncture. That’s how much slower I was than him.
But if it wasn’t for me, Jimmy wouldn’t have even noticed the mountaintop views, beautiful ferns and dense rainforest.

“Feel how much cooler it is in the rainforest,” I say to him at one point.
“Shut up and ride, we’re in a race”, was the response.

And that’s the beauty of the Blue Dragon Challenge: it’s not only that it invites riders of many different abilities to have a crack, it also encourages cyclists with different motivations for riding to work together and somehow find a way of getting to the end with their partnership intact.

It seems Peter Hatton sides with me more than Jimmy, and while he certainly never slows down while racing, he does a least try a catch a whiff of the roses. “I’m a little bit older these days,” the romantic half of the winning pair confides, with a knowing smile. “And I guess I now try and make a point of having a look around. I definitely notice the views. Racing in Tasmania is different to anywhere else I’ve ever raced – it’s wild and raw and really fun and adventurous.”

And while I imagine the only thing that young Ben Bradley really watched during the two days of racing was the back of his cousin’s wheel, I ask Sid – the apprentice’s master – whether he notices the surrounds and whether it beauty matters at all to him.

“No so much when I’m racing, generally it’s eyes on the track”, the great rider replies. “At the same time there are plenty of glimpses of beauty that you see out the corner of your eye along the way. If only everyone would slow down so we could all enjoy the scenery.”

RACING THE DRAGON
The Blue Dragon Challenge is a two-day mountain bike race along a route that combines the beauty of the Blue Tier with the history of The Trail of the Tin Dragon. Riders are all required to team up and ride as a pair for the entire race. This adds the element of teamwork and co-operation as well as being able to share this unique experience with someone along the way.

Stage 1 is a 52km loop starting and finishing in the historic township of Derby. The trail takes riders on a journey through the surrounding hills and across open plains, dipping them deep into the rainforests and along river edges before returning the once bustling tin mining town.

Stage 2 is a 48km lap starting and finishing in Weldborough. First up is a challenging climb to the top of the Blue Tier, through an alpine area distinguished by big granite boulders, huge myrtle trees and stunning rainforest. And then, in best-‘til-last style, the race finishes off with the infamous Blue Tier decent trail.