PRO GRT #1 - Port Angeles

The weekend after Sea Otter quickly turned into round 1 of the Pro Gravity Series. NORBA is dead and for the last couple years there has been a Pro XC tour, with a couple downhill races mixed in on a national level. What has risen in popularity is the regional DH series. Events like Mountain States Cup, Fluidride and Gravity East have helped form a 2010 Pro Gravity tour. Great racing venues, pro pursue and world class riders are starting to bring in more professionals and amateurs alike. Every weekend at one of these races you will find a stacked starting list. Sometimes other factors can attract more participants in an unlikely way. During the Icelandic volcano which erupted during Sea Otter, most European racers couldn't make it home due to the tremendous amount of ash. Therefore a lot of them decided to make the trek up the Pacific Coast to the small town of Port Angeles, WA. Our host for round 1 of the Pro GRT.

Point One Racing made the 23 hr drive from the Bay Area to represent the brand and continue our heritage of racing. The course was similar to riding in Santa Cruz. Trees, roots, rocks and familiar dirt. It had rained on Friday night, so by Saturday the course was slick to say the least. Everybody coming down had a bike caked in mud. It wasn't until Sunday that the course really dried out and conditions were perfect. Alex Amaral had qualified 10th in junior X out of over 30 riders. Knowing he can step up his time, it was going to make a great race. Chris Lauber had some mechanical issues, needing to borrow a shock for practice runs and then completely borrowing a bike for his race run. A crash unfortunately kept him off the box, however it was still a superb effort considering the circumstances.

Alex had a clean race run and improved his qualifying time by over 5 seconds. Tough to do when course conditions changed so much from Saturday to Sunday. Although improving his time, he still finished 10th. Great job to all our racers!


Mt. Shasta


Downtown Port Angeles


View of the mountains from the hotel room


Vancouver Island in the background




Team Meeting




Post Practice


Few shots of the bottom of the course and a couple random riders











Point One Racing Athletes:

PITTS, GRAEME 2:47.78
BUELL, BRIAN 2:50.71
BELLUZZI, FOREST 2:51.21
AMARAL, ALEX 2:54.29
KEMP, LOGAN 2:57.50
BUELL, MICHAEL 3:05.92
LAUBER, CHRIS 3:20.23 (crash)

Full results can be found here.