Tasmanian riders among medals at Australian Mountain Bike Championships at Maydena

A trio of former Riverside High and Launceston College riders led the way in the under-23 races with Sam Fox claiming a long-awaited maiden national title, Izzy Flint landing a silver medal and teenager Daniel Aurik finishing 12^th in his first year in the category.

After two junior world championship campaigns, Australian all-schools and Tasmanian senior titles, 20-year-old Fox was thrilled with his victory at the eighth time of asking.

"Unbelievable, it's still sinking in," he said. "It's been a long time coming and hard to put into words how ecstatic I am right now. There's been a lot of behind the scenes work gone into this, a lot of missed birthday parties and other occasions when I've been training so it's nice to pay that back with a result like this.

"They were truly Tasmanian conditions out there. The weather was torrid and the course was hard. There was a long, steep climb and you needed maximum effort to get up, especially in the wet."

Flint also felt the weather helped the Tasmanians.

"The rain was pretty torrential during our race and our conditions were worse than in the boys' race," said the 18-year-old.

"The weather was terrible but to be really honest I would not have picked better conditions for myself. I ride in the rain a lot because in Tassie if you don't do that you don't get to ride much, so that's a strength of mine.

"It's my first year as an under-23 and I was just testing the waters to see where I'm at because it's a big step up, so I'm so stoked to get a silver medal."

Both medallists work at Launceston bike shops and called on knowledge gleaned from Sprung and MyRide to get them over the line, although Fox confessed to a late tactical oversight.

"I actually thought I had another lap to go because I had tuned out a bit during the briefing at the start. So I came in for my last lap thinking that was the time to put everything out there and not get caught, but then I heard them yelling out that I had won the national title.

"It played out perfectly really. I got away pretty early on the first lap so then I could ride to my own rhythm and not take any crazy risks because it was pretty wet out there and a lot of people were crashing out.

"But I made some important tyre decisions that helped. Normally I run a dry weather tyre but 10 minutes before I left for the race my team manger suggested a different one with bigger grip and that made a big difference because I did not lose traction at any point."

Fox's fastest lap of 18:16 was only five seconds slower than the average time of triple Olympian Daniel McConnell, who claimed the elite men's title.

Fox's overall time of 1:13:53.657 saw him finish 25 seconds ahead of long-time nemesis Matthew Dinham, of NSW. Hobart's Tom Cheesman came seventh.

West Australian Katherine Hosking won the women's race by 4:23, but Flint was thrilled with her silver. "She got away early on the first lap and I got a bit caught up with other girls crashing and we were having to walk for a lot of the climbs because it was so wet," said the former gravity enduro national champ who also has Tasmanian all-schools titles to her name.

"I started with ambitions of making the podium and I knew my form was pretty good coming off my road work but mountain biking is a very different sport. So I was going in hoping and am delighted to get second.

"The course was brutal, that made for a tough race, especially anyone not used to those conditions. So the weather helped the home state riders, but not necessarily the course. It's really amazing to have achieved this in a national title and really sets up the next couple of years for me."

Hobart's Ben Bradley led the home-state charge in the elite men's race, finishing fifth, with Wyena's Alex Lack 11^th and Ben Iles, of Launceston, 14^th.

McConnell's wife Rebecca won the elite women's race.