Wade Bootes: Official Web Site

WADE'S JOURNAL

May 21st

Hinterland BMX Club held their Open Day this past weekend at the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. This was considered the pre race for the up and coming South Queensland Championship which will be held on June 25th and 26th. The weather stayed fine all day and the track was really fun to ride. The Club is still in the process of making all the jumps bigger, which will make it a more challenging track come time for the Championships. BMX Queensland also made this event part of their Pro Rider Clinic Tour. Glen Codega and myself were ask to conduct the clinics on behalf of the State Coaching Director in the quest of BMX Queensland helping with the development of their riders. There were over 50 riders that signed up for the clinics, which were then split into 3 sessions and ran over a 5 1/2 hour period. All the riders had a great time and all showed signs of improvement. The clinics are also designed to have new coaches observe and gain experience to finally have enough qualifying hours to become accredited BMX coaches themselves.

Racing was tough in the AA pro men as we had a bunch of National BMX squad members from Australia and New Zealand battling it out for the prize money. The racing was exciting to watch as the riders were going super fast and making moves on each other all night just to make it to the finals. Julian Limm had a huge crash in one of the moto's after hitting a soft spot on the track and went flying over the handle bars, there was also some crashing action with riders taking in the minor spot in the moto's. Final time seen Kamakasi, Limm and myself drag racing down the first straight. I had the lead going into the first corner and started to pull away down the back straight. Codega was moving his way through the pack after hitting the gate at the start. Joel Clarke was showing his home club advantage and was closely on the wheels of Kamakasi and Limm. Kamakasi held the lead over Limm and it seemed that the Aussie boys were to strong this week for Stratford who is over from New Zealand preparing for the up and coming UCI events.
1st Bootes TeamWBR, 2nd Kamakasi, 3rd Limm, 4th Clarke, 5th Codega, 6th Stratford (NZ)

South Queensland has the majority of the top riders in Australia and the South Queensland Championship will be a great race to watch. The next stop on the tour will be round 9 of the UCI World Ranking Series at Lake Macquarie, NSW June 2nd and 3rd, were we will see all the top Elite riders chasing points and preparing for the World Championships come July in Paris, France.

May 20th

Today I received an official letter on behalf of the Australian Sports Commission, ABMXA and the National High Performance Coach congratulating me on being selected in the National BMX Squad for 2005. With BMX now in the Olympics, it looks like BMX will be getting the support it need to run a full on program. All depending on what funding BMX receives for the 2006 budget year, will determines how many riders on the squad get to travel and race as a team at international events. This is a huge step for BMX in Australia and already other countries have similar programs set up. I am looking forward in what we can expect from a program well run. From the end of this year will all count towards the Olympic selection, for qualifying as a National team and as an individual rider. Let the games begin............

May 5th.

I have just got back from New Zealand after testing out some new products at the 2006 MTB World Championship race venue. The 4 cross course is huge, very fun to ride but maybe one of those courses that maybe hard to race as we are riding at high speeds. It was a great fun 3 days as I was taken care of very well by all the people involved in the adventure in New Zealand. I cannot tell you to much about the mission as yet but I will hopefully get to talk about it more very soon.

Coaching is going very well at the moment as I am running the WBR athlete development training sessions at Redlands and Nerang BMX tracks. I am also starting to get calls to do more coaching all over Australia and hope to set up a coaching tour later in the year. So if your club is interested to get more information or to set up a date for some coaching, just send me an e mail so that we can schedule a date. I am just waiting on my certificate to arrive in the mail for the Presenters course I have completed and this will then allow me to run Coaching Courses for new coaches. So again if your club is interested to get more coaches accredited in your area, send me an e mail or ask your State body or BMXA that you are after someone to run these courses for your members.

I am back in Australia for about 5 weeks and I will be busy racing and training other riders in this time. We are still getting things together for the race team and have some new great products coming from Percentage Designs. We hope to select the riders very shortly and have them all decked out in gear soon.