"Itamar Iliyah Mountain Bike Race, Arad, Israel" Top 5 Page for this destination Southern District Travelogue by Martin_S.

Each year here in Arad the municipal sport club holds a mountain bike race in memory of Itamar Iliayah. A boy from Arad who is no longer with us in this life and his family designed this way to help people remember him.

Itamar Iliyah Bike race in Arad, Israel

As the race goes the number of contestants dwindles as some drop out because of the difficulty.

Itamar Iliyah Bike race in Arad, Israel

Here one of the racers has stopped on the trail to fix a flat tire. He has not as yet learned the ettiquite of the trail, when you stop, you remove yourself from the trail so as not to bother those behind you, this is doubly so in a race.

Itamar Iliyah Bike race in Arad, Israel

This might not look like a picture from a mountain bike race, but on the smoother sections of the course you could find flocks of sheep on the trail....It is MOUNTAIN BIKING AFTER ALL ^o^
This just made for one more unusual obstacle..

Itamar Iliyah Bike race in Arad, Israel

You can see the riders along the edge of a small cliff here and this was the very easy section of the trail and not very technical.

Itamar Iliyah Bike race in Arad, Israel

There were all levels of riders in the race, divided up into numerous catagories. Here you can see one of the amature riders dismount to go down a small hill, while some of the better riders did not even slow down here, not to mention getting off their steeds.

Itamar Iliyah Bike race in Arad, Israel

Utilizing my offical capacity as "Marshall", I was able to get very close to the trail. My job was to set up emergency rescue all along the trail, insure communications between the points, coordinate first aid. We were very well spread out over the track this time with 12 all terrain vehicles to cover the track.