Ray Vandersee and John Allen took the honours yesterday at the fifth annual Mount Buller Sprint, finishing with a total time of 55 minutes 62 seconds over six runs up the 16-kilometre road to the alpine tourist village.
Despite the event running to completion, competition was never at the forefront of the competitor’s minds after a tragic accident on the first day of proceedings that claimed the life of co-driver Paul Flintoft.
A message from Flintoft’s family wishing his comrades well and thanking them for their thoughts, accompanied with clearing weather after two days of rain and fog, slightly buoyed the competitor’s spirits ahead of yesterday’s final runs.
“To receive the message from Paul’s family was nice, and with the weather finally clearing yesterday’s run seemed like a new beginning for the field, ” said Vandersee.
“Like all of the competitors here at Mount Buller my thoughts were with Paul’s family as we completed what we, as a field, had set out to do from the start on Friday.
“We bypassed the spraying of the champagne on the podium out of respect, these circumstances never make things like this easy. ”
The only competitor to achieve sub nine minute times on all of yesterday’s runs, the Skelta G-Force added another win to the growing list of accolades by finishing in front of Klark Quinn and co-driver Linda Long and Grant Denyer and co-driver Dale Moscatt in yesterday’s final day of competition.
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