For the last day of nationals, we had the event that everyone had been waiting for. Everyone has their own reason for looking forward to this event. For some, it is for the opportunity at another medal, for others (such as myself) its the day of the nationals dinner.
Due to time shortages, all divisions started together. This meant that the packs that we were skating in were comparatively large. Large packs are alot of fun to skate in because one can "sit in" the slipstream of the many skaters in front with very little effort. Much anticipated were team Bont international's arrival in Australia for this event, a marathon which was scheduled to be part of the world inline cup (WIC), but was pulled from the schedule at the last minute. Nevertheless, there was unmistakable international flavour in the field with Wayne Begg, Nicole Begg, Shane Dobbin, Kalon Dobbin, Geoff Wilton and Scott Arlidge coming from New Zealand, Christoph Luginbühl and Marc Christen from Switzerland, Luca Presti and Fransesco Zangarini from Italy and Wouter Hebbrecht from Belgium all making the trip to Melbourne.
During the course of the marathon, there were many breakaways which really caused the field to spread out some. Most of these, however, failed to really break away from the pack until about halfway when a pack of eight skaters broke away from the main bunch and quickly put a 50 second gap on them. This pack, consisting of Luca Presti, Christoph Luginbühl, Michael Byrne, Danny Finster, Edward Dimmack, Corey Stevens, Kalon Dobbin and Peter Currell. Before long, these skaters had lapped the pack and it became clear very quickly that the end result was going to be down to those eight.
Two laps out, there was a breakaway consisting of Danny Finster, Christoph Luginbühl, and Peter Currell which managed to put some distance onto the field. When they came round for the bell lap, Peter Currell had gotten away from that breakaway.
The photographer from "captured.net.au" sprints to the line in time for a shot of the finish. Much to our dismay, there wasn't a huge field sprint to finish off the marathon, but rather a battle of guts with Peter Currell coming over the line first in front of Danny Finster and Christoph Luginbühl.
The finish in the ladies division was very close, but Theresa Ryan (in the past, known as Theresa Cliff) put in a good sprint to finish it off and she was followed over the line by (in order) Nicole Begg, Angeline Thomas, Sandra Lorincz and Brooke Lochland.
Peter Currell retelling his victory to Shaun Thompson who spent the day riding around taking photos of the marathon.
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