Break Loose Adventure Blog

The NSW Caravan, Camping, 4WD & Holiday Supershow opened its doors yesterday (Sat 22) at Rosehill Gardens in Sydney. Being billed as a one stop shop that caters for all your holiday and leisure needs, its certainly is worth checking out if you are planning on either a camping, 4wdriving, caravaning or outdoor holiday this year.

You can spend hours browsing among hundreds of the latest caravans, campervans, campertrailers, motorhomes, 4WDs, tents and fishing equipment as well as caravan, camping and 4WD accessories. Break Loose will be off to the show this week to see whats latest and we will be providing a report on the latest inovations.

Visit http://www.supershow.com.au/ for more information.

The first ever Australian MTB Marathon Championship will be held in September this year as part of the Flight Centre Cycle Epic to be held near Toowoomba in South East Queensland.

In an Australian first for the sport of mountain biking the nation’s peak mountain biking body, Mountain Bike Australia (MTBA), endorsed the Flight Centre Cycle Epic as the inaugural 2006 Australian MTB Marathon Championship.
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Sydney commuters are ditching cars for bicycles in a bid to avoid record petrol prices.

New car sales have fallen and bicycle stores are the big winners, cashing in on the move towards alternative transport modes. The cost of unleaded petrol in Sydney surged to almost $1.40 a litre last week on the back of rising world oil prices and is tipped to rise even further next week.

Sales at Sydney’s Clarence Street Cyclery have climbed by around 15% in the past 18 months, largely as a result of petrol prices. The biggest sales coming from the middle-aged baby-boomers, with health and fitness incentives also playing a role.

There’s a new high performance motor sport sweeping the globe and now it’s headed for Australia. Referred to as the ‘Formula One of the sky,’ this global phenomenon is the Red Bull Air Race. It will be held for the first time in Australia on 19 November 2006. This free spectator event will touch down in Perth for the final leg of the 2006 Red Bull Air Race World Series above the picturesque waters of the Swan River.

Launched in 2003, the Red Bull Air Race is a thrilling new aviation event that puts the world’s most talented pilots up against each other in a race based on speed, precision and skill. The race features a dynamic new discipline of flying, where the objective is to navigate a challenging obstacle course in the sky in the fastest possible time.

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At the age of 9, Paralympic star Michael Milton lost his left leg to bone caner. But this hasn’t stopped Milton from achieving… This inspirational Australian has set a new open Australian alpine speed skiing record at Les Arcs in France.

Milton reached 213.65kph to break the old mark of 212.26 kph set by compatriot Nick Kirshner in 1997. His time surpasses his own disabled skiing world record of 210.4kph.

Milton, who holds a swag of medals from Paralympic competition, including a silver in his fifth and final Games in Torino earlier this year, set his sights on the open record over the past few years. It’s believed it may be the first open record held by an Australian athlete with a disability.

Milton plans to continue skiing for another four or five years and he says he believes a speed between 220kph and 230kph is attainable.

Congratulations Michael from the team at Break Loose!

Mooloolaba Yacht Club skipper Michael Balkin completed a meteoric rise up the ranks of Queensland offshore yacht racing when he steered the former Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club sloop Corum to a popular win in the Brisbane to Gladstone race.

Just 18 months ago Balkin was satisfied with sailing in fun race events on the Sunshine Coast before he decided to buy the champion sloop Corum.

That became a career changing decision when skipper Balkin and his crew out sailed their rivals in a demanding test of tactical offshore racing over the 308 nautical mile course.

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Australia has returned to the top in the 4km teams pursuit with a stunning victory at the Track Cycling World Championships in Bordeaux, France.

The Australian quartet of Mark Jamieson (TAS) 21, Peter Dawson (WA) 24, Matthew Goss (TAS) 19, and Stephen Wooldridge (NSW) 28, stopped the clock at 4min01.491sec to defeat Great Britain (Stephen Cummings, Rob Hayles, Paul Manning and Geraint Thomas) by 36 hundredths of a second (4min01.527sec) in one of the closest fought gold medal finals in World Championship history.

The Australians were half a second up after one kilometre but the Brits fought back to within a tenth of a second by halfway. Australia rallied to stretch the margin to 0.4 of a second with one kilometre remaining and from there both teams laid it all on the line. The Brits edged ahead with two laps remaining but the Australians refused to say die and clawed back the lead to secure the gold medal.

Get the latest results from Cycling Australia

Earlier this month Australian Formula One driver Mark Webber urged motorists to look out for cyclists when driving.

Speaking at the launch of the Amy Gillett Foundation in Melbourne, Webber revealed he accepted the position as a Patron of the Foundation after being profoundly affected by Australian cyclist Amy Gillett’s death in Germany last year.

The Amy Gillett Foundation has been established to promote safe and harmonious relationships between cyclists and motorists. With bike sales outnumbering cars – Australians have bought over 1.1 million bikes each year for the last five years – and 35 deaths and 2,500 serious injuries involving cyclists each year, the majority involving a motor vehicle, this road safety message is becoming increasingly important.

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Australian cyclist Ben Kersten took out silver in the 1km time trial at the track cycling world championshipts in Bordeaux, France

Britain’s Chris Hoy got revenge on Australian rival Ben Kersten today by winning the 1km time trial for a third time at the track cycling world championships.

Hoy, who also won the title in 2002 and 2004, clocked 1 minute, 1.36 seconds to beat Kersten (1:02.08) after the Australian famously upstaged the Brit at the Commonwealth Games last month.

Frenchman Francois Pervis placed third.

“I went really hard, I didn’t feel so much pressure,” Hoy said at the Bordeaux velodrome.

Find out all the results at the Australian Cycling Federation website.

A teenager surfing on sand dunes slammed head first into a tree on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland. He has been airlifted to Royal Brisbane Hospital where he is in a serious condition.

The 18-year-old careered down a 50m high dune on a surfboard into the tree on a Sunshine Coast beach, 10km north of Teewah near Noosa. He fell head first into the tree when he lost control of his surf board, paramedics said.