Peters, Hanlen tame the Codgers Challenge

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Sunday's cross country race day promised to showcase New Zealand's best on the Codgers Trail Network, just down the road from Saturday's downhill venue at the New Zealand Mountain Bike Cup in Nelson. Being a UCI Category 2 event meant riders were chasing valuable world ranking points, and the race course had been set to match the importance of the event, fast and hard.

Local age group riders turned out in good numbers for age group category racing on the morning race start, mixing it up with New Zealand Mountain Bike Cup series competitors. As an entree to the Elite/under 23 and Under 19 afternoon race, it couldn't have been better with great racing across the board.

The elite and under 23 women's race quickly turned into a tussle at the front between Karen Hanlen and Fiona MacDermid. Both were locked together during the early stages of the five-lap event, but it was Hanlen who kept a level of unrelenting pressure on at the front to win by one minute. Nelson's Eloise Fry rode to a strong third after an early close contest with Katie O'Neill, who battled back from a broken rear wheel while in podium contention to ninth.

Dirk Peters (Santa Cruz) came to Nelson hungry to repeat his last elite and under 23 men's win from last month in Napier. But from the gun, he knew that Nelson's George Bennett was going to keep him honest. Bennett was having one last mountain bike race on his home tracks before heading off to join his US professional road cycling team, and he lead for the early stages of this race.

Bennett couldn't shake the tenatious Peters, however. "I put time into Dirk every lap on the climb, but he was right back on my tail in the descents before I knew what was going on - I just don't know how he did that but I couldn't hold him off".

Peters made a decisive move on Bennett early on lap four, and charged away from that point to a comfortable win. It took a sprint finish to the line to separate Mike Northcott and Carl Jones for third and fourth, and a quickly improving Brad Hudson held off a stalking Kyle Wood for fifth.

In the Nelson race, Anton Cooper made his first New Zealand MTB Cup appearance of this year. The Christchurch pocket rocket demolished his Under 19 competition in dominant style, while circulating close to the pace of Bennett and Peters.

The New Zealand Mountain Bike Cup next moves south to Christchurch for the weekend of February 19-20 for the series final in both downhill and cross country.

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