Centralian Advocate, Friday, February 17, 2012 — 55

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Locals in national testMOUNTAIN BIKE

Warren Thomson

Nic Learmonth, Debbie Heller, Paul Standish, Brendan Rose, Ben Gooley, Jethro Tessmann, Emma Markham, Ned Gaynor, Joshua Markham and Luke Pankhurst are off to the AustralianMountain Bike Championships in Adelaide next weekend Picture: JUSTIN BRIERTY

A STRONG field of local cyclistsfrom the Central AustralianRough Riders (CARR) will gettested against the nation’s bestnext weekend when they competein the Australian Mountain BikeChampionships in Adelaide.

The event will be held at Ade-laide’s Eagle Park Mountain BikeComplex with several junior ridersgoing along to learn from otherriders.

CARR vice-president BenGooley said: ‘‘We’ve got about 16people going as part of our group,

but there may be a few membersthat are going separately.

‘‘Last year we didn’t have a bigjunior contingent like we have thisyear, as a lot of juniors are headingdown to get some experience, andit will be an eye-opener to see howthe fast guys run.

‘‘JP (CARR president JohnPyper) has instructed the kids tobring their camera along to takephotos, especially when the fastelite guys are going around thetrack.

‘‘He wants to see how they tackledifferent obstacles and learn asmuch as they can.

‘‘The Merida team down there

are also going to help out byteaching the young guys skills andhaving a bit of time out withthem.’’

A lot of preparation has goneinto next week’s tournament andGooley praised the younger ridersfor their efforts in the lead-up tothe event.

He said: ‘‘JP has had us doingAnzac Hill sprints and getting usfeeling a little bit sick in themornings and regretting havinghad breakfast, but the kids havebeen going nuts after doing someof them.

‘‘Having the national champion-ships to work towards has given

them motivation to go out ridingevery weekend and work towardsthe event.’’

Gooley believes that the groupwill be extremely competitive dur-ing the event.

He said: ‘‘The good thing aboutthe nationals is that it attracts allsorts of riders that have riddenfrom a couple of months to 50years and there are categories foreveryone so it’s not so much thateveryone is going to go down thereand get flogged by a whole heap ofelite riders.

‘‘If you race in your category,there will be a lot of riders to raceagainst with different abilities,

which will keep everyone inter-ested.’’

Alice Springs will host the NTTitles on the Easter weekend, anevent Gooley hopes the commun-ity will support.

He said: ‘‘We’ve already got acouple of sponsors on board as wellas a few more possible sponsors.

‘‘The NT Titles on the Easterweekend will have races from a4-hour enduro down to a 40-secondAnzac Hill sprint that we hope wecan get the community involved inand cheer everyone on.’’

The Central Australian RoughRiders thank everyone for theirsupport.

Crushing victoryBASKETBALL

Dale Fletcher

FEDERAL WallabiesStorm continuedtheir impressive AliceSprings BasketballAssociation LeagueMen form with a re-sounding 37-point winagainst Memo Magicat the Traeger ParkBasketball Stadiumon Tuesday night.

The current leagueleaders dominatedfrom the opening tipand swished five con-s e c u t i v e t h r e e -pointers to enjoy adouble-digit lead fromquarter time, to runout 71-34 winners.

Chris Atkinson ledthe way for Federalwith 19 points, whileJason Wilmot added15 points.

Rockets won a high-scoring affair againstNyewente 88-72.

Nyewente’s MichaelSevallos was on fireand scored a game-high 32 points.

Rockets enjoyed acomfortable leadt h r o u g h o u t t h e

match after trailing

by three points at the

first change.

Junior Saena was

on target for Rockets,

scoring 29 points.

In League Women,

Michelle Ellis scored a

game-high 18 points

and again guided Fed-

eral Wallabies Storm

to a 45-31 success

against Memo Mus-

tangs.

T h e M u s t a n g s

could score only two

points in the final

quarter as Federal

Wallabies Storm suf-

focated the Memo at-

tack.

R o c k e t s F a r n o

again showed they are

a threat to take out

the League Women

championship, with

great contributions

from Lauren Parai (16

points) and Ginnae

Soloman (14 points),

were simply too good

for Memo Jets, claim-

ing the honours by 39

points.

Warriors’ win aimRUGBY UNION

Warren Thomson

Devils’ Mark Newman wins a line out during the lastWarriors-Devils clash

KIWI Warriors will beout to further enhancetheir finals chanceswhen they take on Fed-eral Devils on Saturdaynight at Anzac Oval.

Warriors have beenin good form for the lastthree weeks and wererewarded with theirfirst win of the season, a35-33 win over Cubs,that has kept their fin-als chances alive.

They are now onlytwo wins behind Cubsand an upset winagainst Federal Devils,who have a two-win ad-vantage at the top ofthe ladder, will givethem a massive oppor-tunity to topple Cubsoff third spot during thelast three games of theseason.

But a win will be amassive challenge, withDevils coming into thisgame with six consecu-tive wins.

Devils coach TimBlacker said: ‘‘I couldn’tbe happier with the waywe are playing.

‘‘Our game againstCubs was clinical andwe played very well.Last week againstEagles, they certainlygave it to us but wem a n a g e d t o p u l lthrough.

‘‘Last time we playedWarriors, they held usout for 50 minutes andhave played well since,and defeated Cubs lastweek.

‘ ‘ W a r r i o r s h a v ealways been a talentedside and their traininghas come through atthe right end of theseason.’’

One percenters willbe the focus in tomor-row night’s game asthey try to get every-thing running smoothlyinto the finals.

Blacker said: ‘‘Our fo-cus this week is gettingthe little things right.

‘‘Rugby is a game ofinches and this week-end will we need to takeinches instead of givingthem.

‘‘The team is lookinggood at the moment.We missed training onTuesday night as there

w e r e w i v e s a n dgirlfriends to attend to,but we put in double theeffort at last night’straining.’’

Devils will be lookingforward to a good de-fensive test as Warriorswill be hungry to hangon to possession to limitDevils’ offence.

W a r r i o r s c o a c hJames Nolan said: ‘‘Ourfocus is always oncontrolling the ball andmaintaining possess-ion.

‘‘Devils have backswho are devastatingrunners but it will hardfor them to have animpact if we have theball and they don’t.’’

Warriors captainZach Mather will nolonger take part in thisseason and the teamline-up won’t be con-firmed until tomorrow,but Nolan says the teamis keeping up-beat dueto some great games inthe past few weeks.

He said: ‘‘It’s nice tosee the game finallycome together andhopefully we can getsome more wins.’’