Tahlia O’Hare has made impressive head-way in 2020 Women MX World Championship Opening Rounds claiming best result in only 2nd WMX season finishing 10th Overall in Championship points.
Making deliberate decision to re-locate from home-land in Australia to pursue career racing Europe’s highly competitive WMX Series along with EMX Women Championship, Tahlia has all signs of fierce determination to make it to top step of podium.
Tahlia’s comments from WMX Round 2 at Valkenswaard: ‘Mixed feelings about the weekend. First race I had a shocker was running around 7th first lap then threw it into the sand 3 times came back to 15th.
‘Second moto had a ripper start around 4th then hung with the girls. Small crash mid way but picked it up and finished it off in 8th🤙 need to sort my first motos out but I will keep working for the next race💪
Sounds on point to me- and all pre-season training was just as focused to prepare Tahlia in every aspect to race to her fullest potential. With 2019 WMX season cut-short due to injury, lessons learnt can be hard going, though ones not keen to repeat. 2020 will surely be all about maintaining momentum gained from solid performance at WMX Round One at Matterley, backed by 10th Overall in WMX Championship at MXGP of Netherlands weekend back.
Tahlia: ‘Yep, this is my second WMX season technically but I missed a lot of the first season due to injury last year. I had a good winter prep in Belgium and Spain and worked a lot on getting faster so I came into the season as prepared as possible to race’.
‘The first two rounds I just wanted to get some points and get out some-what healthy as I had some little injuries leading up to both weekends. My moto 1 was not what I wanted so I had to work hard in Moto 2 but I am happy to be sitting 10th in the overall as of now’.
So what are the options for a talented Women MX rider to compete at world level? Australia has produced many great MX riders to present day, including WMX racer Meghan Rutledge who has achieved 4 WMX GP wins in her career- best result 2nd behind Kiara Fontanesi in 2014 WMX Championship Overall by only 5 points.
Tahlia: ‘Honestly for me competing in Australia isn’t even a thought. For the Women we get basically 2 big races and we don’t have a lot of girls to enter so definitely not the level of competition there is here. I want to be the best I can at racing and it’s not possible to do that in Australia unless I switch over and race enduro’.
Then, what about acclimatization to racing different tracks: ‘I always look forward to sand tracks. I feel more comfortable on sand and even mud. I usually do well probably because I’m a taller rider. I’ve ridden a lot of wet, sand tracks in Belgium over the winter and even in Western Australia we have more sand tracks than everyone would think- so I know how it goes’.
Tahlia plays it forward all the way. Not only striving to develop race-craft, bike-skills and levels of fitness to match European counter-parts in WMX Series, but also challenging assumptions that riding bikes X # of kms away from World MX circuit is no reason not to pursue hard won goals.
Tahlia: ‘For sure, I mean it’s the top level of the sport. We learnt a lot last year and I never really put in a solid ride so over the off season I really went to work on everything. My team brought in a trainer for us and he has helped sort out some technique and schedule on ride days which has helped a lot’.
WMX next Round as of today: MXGP of Italy at Maggiora, May 17th.
Words: Sharon Cox.
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