RAT PATROL OZ TAKES 2005 LINE HONOURS IN WORLD'S BIGGEST MTB RACE, UNDER CLOUD OF SUSPICIONOctober 8/9 2005 By Lycra Bandit Much to the astonishment of organisers and many in the crowd, Rat Patrol Oz's Master Gravity Esquire (MGE) has taken line honours in dubious circumstances at the 2005 MONT 24hr Mountain Bike Race in Canberra.
A late entry and dark horse in the race, MGE left the more fancied pro teams for dead, despite giving them a hefty head start.
MGE begins it's historic record-breaking lap "Yeah, look, don't tell anyone" exclaimed Limp Jimmy, pilot & master builder, "but we didn't do the whole run. We started walking up there, but soon decided that 800m was way too far for us, so we just stood on the sideline at the 300m mark - maybe it was only the 200m mark?"he asked Co-pilot and co-builder of MGE, Nancy Porker. "In any case," said Porker, "we waited for a few runners to pass, before joining in. As we ran along strongly with the other competitors, we thought it would only be fair to whip a beer out of the esky, once we got onto the bike and give the buggers a bit of a head start." Pulling out from the start, MGE received a roar of applause from the thousands in the crowd as she trundled down the start, with pilots Limp Jimmy and Nancy Porker sucking down beers, instead of the usual water or sports drink, located in the drink bottle holders.
And it was indeed MGE that came across the finish line for the fastest opening lap in the entire history of the race, with a time of 38 minutes, 42 seconds. But some officials were dubious. "I'm still waiting on confirmation, but I don't think we recorded their race number at any of the checkpoints around the 19.1Km course," said Russ Baker, head race official "and I mean, look at that thing! Do you seriously think it could make it through the single track, or under half the branches for that matter?!" One race volunteer went further, claiming she'd seen MGE take a sneaky right at the end of the starting straight, before the pilots dismounted for a beer and a cigarette. "That's bollocks mate!" exclaimed Porker, "I mean, yeah, we were keeping our fluids up and we might have had a chong, but see those bolts there? They mean we can easily split the bike into TWO tallbikes for the singletrack sections. It's not our fault we were going too fast for the checkpoint officials to record our race number!" Despite churning out the fastest lap, and also being officially acknowledged as the first across the line at the finish of the race, the Rat Patrol team placed last, completing only one lap. "We're not here to win mate" exclaimed Porker "we're here to drink beer and not over-exert ourselves."
"Everybody was talking about Master Gravity Esquire and photographers were always crowding around it, asking lame questions like: 'Why would you do that?', 'Is each Tallbike really 126 Speed??', 'Where can you buy one of those?' and 'So ... tallbike jousting; what's that for??'" said Rat Patrol Race Support Crew member and MGE co-builder, Hwarf Bags (abbreviation of: He Who Asks For Beer And Gets Cider). The two riders featured on several local and national television channels, and will no doubt be in many expensive glossy elitist propaganda-ridden consumer-inducing capitalist-oriented mountain biker magazines around the world.
Official results will be posted shortly with many expecting the Rat Patrol team to be disqualified. Regardless of the validity of the official result, one thing is for certain, the biggest cross-country 24hr mountain bike race in the world will never be the same again!
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