The globe’s best downhill racers converged on the Bathurst track for what is Australia’s premier gravity racing event, hitting speeds of around 100km/hr as they battled for the quickest times over a 1.3 kilometre course starting from Skyline and finishing on Conrod Straight.

That the event was granted world championship status by the International Gravity Sports Association made downhill skateboarders, inline skaters, street and classic luge racers as well as gravity bike riders push even harder.

After facing 33 degrees Celsius temperatures on Saturday morning, project manager Peter Smith said the wind gusts provided relief to competitors as they waited for their run.

“The wind is not bad, it can keep you cool. If you’re in leather and you’re lined up there for 15 minutes it can get you hot and dizzy, so yeah, the wind makes a difference,” he said.

“It doesn’t really affect them when they are racing because they are behind the walls and the walls are a big help breaking the wind.

“It is alright until you get to Conrod [Straight] as you can get a little bit buffeted there. When you are doing 90km/hr a little wind buffet makes you shake so you learn how to make it stop.”

According to Smith, the surface at Mount Panorama helped competitors hit high speeds during their runs but also have better control than in other events conducted on normal roads.

“If you race on a normal road it is never this smooth. On a normal road you will have bits that are gravelly, bits that aren’t nice to go over because there are indents or water has gone across the road and tar has been applied differently,” he said.

“Those things can be right in the middle of where you are trying to foot break and set up for a corner so you have got to deal with the conditions and the corner whereas here it’s all smooth. It’s your control, your run, you can’t blame the track.”

Still, the three days of racing did see numerous accidents as competitors pushed their limits. On Friday one female competitor had to be taken away in an ambulance for what was later diagnosed as a fractured arm.

“I think it was just a fractured ulna. Everyone was getting the line into The Dipper wrong on Friday, they were taking it a bit too hard. She just went in too fast and was in a tuck. She is a natural foot, she was grabbing the rail and trying to drop back and just went straight into the hay bales,” Smith said.

“Her arm with all her body weight behind it took the impact.”

For most of those who crashed, it was only a minor hiccup as they picked themselves up, completed their run and looked forward to flying down the Mount once again.

“Hitting the hay bales is like a really hard tackle in football. If you hit the bales hard and are not ready for it you can get hurt and get the wind knocked out of you. But if you do it in just the right way you can go through it and be okay,” Smith said.

“It’s how you do it. I’ve seen footage of a guy losing it and he is 10 feet in the air with his board flipping in the air behind him. He lands, rolls over, flips through the air again and lands in the hay bales. But then he just pops out of the hay bales, gets on his board and away he goes.

“This kid has done a double high-side backwards summersault into the hay bales but he is just interested in getting back on his board and going.”