Racing pushbikes in various forms is nothing new for Nich Shields, so it didn’t take much convincing for him to enter the Velosolutions Pump Track World Championships Australian Qualifying Round on the weekend.
The pump track in Muswellbrook has recently been completed, which coincided with entries to the Dungog event being open so he decided to give it a shot.
Nich explained that at this event the focus is on setting the quickest time around the track, rather than flair and tricks as you would expect on a regular skatepark.
“You have one person on the track at a time and you basically get a flying start from a place you can drop in, you’ll get a chance to get your speed up, and then you’ll pass the timing flag and that’s when your time starts, you do a full lap, back to that same flag again and the time stops again, and then you exit the track,” he explained.
“Everyone gets a chance to do a timed run to put yourself on the leaderboard and they will pick out the top half of the field, essentially, to see who will make it through to the knockout rounds.”
Nich made it through to the top eight, but unfortunately was knocked out after finishing sixth in the masters class.
Now that the region has two pump tracks, being Muswellbrook and Dungog, it is a possibility that we will see more competitions like this so Nich is encouraging locals to get out and give the tracks a crack.
“Pretty much half the field of the race at Dungog were on race BMX’s, but for sure, you could take any bike onto the pump track and have fun,” he said.
“Where it’s going to change how fast you’re going, you’re going to want to have a bike that is small, nimble, and have little to no suspension, because if you’re on a big suspension mountain bike they are useless around the track like that, they’re just so slow.”
