Val Di Sole World Cup - Qualifying

Emmeline Ragot is your #1 qualifier for this weekend's world cup in Val Di Sole, Italy!

Crankworx Colorado Dual Slalom

Congratulations to 2nd place Brian Buell of Team Geronimo/Point One Racing!





Results

Winter Park, CO

Some Winter Park action with Point One Racing's Chris Lauber and Tim Lukko. Stay tuned for this weekend's update of Crankworx Colorado.

Care for Christian

Please keep our dear friend Christian Wright in your thoughts. He took a bad crash at the race and is now recovering at the hospital. More information, as well as regular updates can be found here Care for Christian. As of yesterday he has been walking around and wanting to get back on the bike!

Champery World Cup

Congratulations to Emmeline Ragot on her 1st world cup win!



The race for the World Cup title in the women's Downhill got a little tighter on Saturday, at round four in Champéry, Switzerland. World champion Emmeline Ragot (Suspension Center) took the first World Cup victory of her career and jumped into third in the women's overall standings behind leader Sabrina Jonnier (Maxxis-Rocky Mountain).



The rain, which had turned the steep 1,500 metre course into a slippery mud slide during qualifying, finally backed off for race day, but the damage had been done and, in some ways, the drying conditions made things worse. As the thick mud began to dry, it clung to bikes and turned to the consistency of peanut butter, doubling the weight of bikes and slowing forward momentum to a crawl. For the lighter, less powerful women, it was the worst, with riders literally coming to a halt in some corners as they pushed on the ground with their feet to keep moving.

Floriane Pugin (Scott 11) set the first fast, sub-6 minute time. Canada's Claire Buchar (Chain Reaction/Intense) also went under six minutes, but was more than 16 seconds behind Pugin. The young French rider stayed in the hot seat until the final three riders came down, with Ragot racing third from last and knocking over eleven and a half seconds off the top time. Jonnier was next, and moved into second, still nearly five seconds behind Ragot, and the fastest qualifier, Myriam Nicole (Commencal Superiders) slotted into third.



"I was a real balance not to fall, [because] the mud was very sticky," said Ragot. "I kept saying 'go slow, go slow, go slow' ... but not too slow or you will fall over! The end [of the course] it was terrible... I had a rock caught between my frame and my tire. It made a terrible noise. But now I feel good. I have been waiting for a win."

Jonnier now has 850 points to Pugin's 645, with Ragot up to 615 points.
by Rob Jones

More great photos from National Champs

Mikey Haderer


Jon Wilson


Evan Turpen


Brian Buell


Alex Amaral


WM Smith photos

Nationals Champs - E.T.

Hear what Evan Turpen had to say about his experiences at this year's National Champs. There are some photos and video coverage of Evan in our previous posts.

We wish a speedy and complete recovery to both KP and Griz. Looking forward to seeing you guys shred again very soon!

Hey Everyone,

A lot has happened since I last posted on my site...unfortunately not much positive.

Friday's DH practice was interrupted numerous times by crashes requiring serious medical attention. Not on my part, but some of my personal friends were on this list of downed riders.

Elite womens DH racer, Kathy Pruitt was one of these riders to crash big on Friday. She crashed off of a jump into a tree, breaking ribs 2-7 on her left side, breaking her shoulder blade, getting a concussion, and collapsing her left lung.

Kathy had flown in from Santa Cruz to race and had been staying with Annemarie and I for the race. Because of this, I ended practice early, found Kathy's personal belongings, grabbed her rental car, and drove to the hospital in nearby Granby to see what was going on. Once I was allowed to visit, I could see that she was in pretty bad shape. She was crying from the pain and struggling to figure out what had happened. I was soon told to move Kathy's rental car since they needed to land the "Flight for Life" helicopter in the parking lot (Granby hospital is very small).

Kathy was then flown to St. Anthony's hospital in nearby Denver where she would spend some time in the E.R. and eventually be moved to the ICU. They installed a drain tube through her ribs into her left lung and an epidural in her spine to help with the pain. When I visited her Monday in Denver 1 liter of blood had already drained from her lung! Gnarly!

The rest of my weekend was a scattered mix of practice and making sure all of KP's things were taken care of. I boxed up her DH bike and thanks to Clark Wright it would hitch a ride back to California in his truck.

When Sunday rolled around I struggled to get my head in the right racing mindset. My qualifying run was so-so finishing in 12th (I think) with a time of 2:31. For my race run I was determined to shed a lot of time off of this and hopefully move up quite a bit in the results sheet.

When riding the lift up for my race run it began to become extremely windy. Blowing directly up the course with a massive headwind would not help things at all. Despite this, I was still going to give it my all. In the gate I wasn't really nervous or excited, just ready to go. The third beep went off and I pedaled hard out of the gate.

I mangled the first section seemingly hitting every square-edged rock possible. Terrible! I got through it though and managed to regain my composure and settle in to a good pace. I got wild in one rock section whacking my left ankle on my bike or a rock. I'm not sure which one... I continued on, got through all the tough bits, and was almost finished with the high-speed open bit towards the end of the course when I was red-flagged.

A red flag means you have to stop due to a rider being injured on course. A few riders in front of me was Sean McClendon who had a huge crash on the last big jump of the track. He broke both sides of his pelvis, broke his collarbone, and dislocated his hip.

I was told to head down the track and that we would need to get back on the lift immediately for a re-run. Tired, and with my ankle swelled up from my first race run, I got on the lift for my second race run. It began to rain lightly on the lift ride up and continued to rain throughout my second race run. Half way down the track I could tell I was tired. I was struggling to feel in control of my bike through sections. You really only have one all-out race run on tap, especially at 9,000+ feet of elevation!

I ended my second race run with a time of 2:28, a little less than 3 seconds off of the podium. I was disappointed with my finish to say the least. I left Sol Vista to begin the long 20+ hour drive home.

A lot of things went through my head on that drive home. I tried to pull something positive from the whole weekend and here is what I came up with.

1. I didn't get seriously hurt at Sol Vista.
2. I still managed to be in the top 15 riders in the U.S. with what I consider to be one of my worst race runs.
3. I recieved exactly 14 UCI points from this race putting my total UCI point count to 20 (just enough so I can enter in World Cups as I please next year) .
4. Despite all the injuries and poor results I still had a good time riding my bike.
5. National Champs will not be at Sol Vista next year.

I'm now home in Aptos, but will be leaving tomorrow for a week of vacation at our friends cabin in the Sierras. I will have plenty of time to clear my mind and should be back racing at Crankworx in early August.

Until next time, keep the rubber side down!

-Evan

US National Champs - Day 4

Sunday wrapped up the 2010 US National Champs with Pro and Jr. X DH. Congratulations and awesome job to all our athletes who attended!



Point One Racing athletes...

Pro Men:
8 Brian Buell Boulder, CO 2:26.97
14 Evan Turpen Aptos, CA 2:28.49
29 Michael Haderer Concord, CA 2:35.89
38 Jon Wilson Carson City, NV 2:37.24
68 Michael Buell Boulder, CO 2:45.97
74 Graeme Pitts Nevada City, CA 2:53.38

Jr. X:
8 Christian Wright Auburn, CA 2:36.68
12 Alex Amaral Gilroy, CA 2:38.86
24 Logan Kemp Santa Maria, CA 3:57.86


Alex Amaral pinning it and finishing an impressive 12th place in the stacked field. Only a few seconds off the box...

US National Champs - Day 3

Congratulations to Point One Racing's Brian Buell (Team Geronimo) for his 2nd place finish at the MTX US National Champs!







Pro Men Top 5 Results

Ross Milan
Brian Buell
Barry Nobles
Eric Nelson
Blake Carney

Pro Woman Results

Neven Steinmetz
Jacqueline Harmony
Melissa Buhl
Catherine Cantway

US National Champs - Day 2

Day 2 action from Sol Vista...



Brian Buell

US National Champs - Day 1

The US National Champs is currently underway at Sol Vista bike park in Granby, CO. Check out the footage from yesterday's practice featuring Point One Racing's Evan Turpen and Team Geronimo!



Evan Turpen

Matt Patt photo


Sicklines photo

Christian Wright

Sicklines photo

Team Geronimo

Matt Patt photo

Downieville Classic - Max Houtzager

The Downieville Classic All-Mountain World Championship was this past weekend. In beautiful Downieville, CA (tucked away in Gold country), it is one of the toughest, technical and mind numbing races in the world. Riders must compete in both the DH and XC, striving for that "All-Mountain" title. Hear what 1st place Cat 1 junior Max Houtzager had to say about his experience:

I went into my run feeling really confident, knowing that I could out-pedal my competition. I won the xc by ten minutes the day before, but was in the lead in the all mountain (non-combined xc) division by twenty minutes, so could of totally chilled given the length of the downhill in order to win the overall. I wanted to do well in the dh individually also however, so I gave it my all without getting to gnarly. I was having a really clean run so did everything I could to not make any dumb mistakes. I passed all of the juniors that started in front of me (in one minute intervals) except for one that started first, 10 minutes before. This let me pedal even harder, because I had even more motivation to go hard when I saw them, like when I sprinted past Nik Dommen going up the 3rd divide climb or when I saw Matt Dion on the fireroad after 3rd. I met my original goal of going sub 50 minutes, cutting 3 minutes off my time from last year, however didn't meet my new goal I set during the race to beat or match last year's Junior X dh winning time of 48 minutes by Casey Sanchez. I can't complain in the end since my time put me in first for both DH and All Mountain, and racing that course is one of the most fun times you can have on a bike.

Wow. I was not expecting to do so well in this race. It may be my best result yet. I trained a ton for this race, probably more prep than for any other race. Getting up to Tahoe the friday before the WA camp gave me a solid two weeks to acclimate. I even got to stay in Forrest City which is higher than staying in downieville. I was more nervous/anxious for this race then any other race. Living like a pro mountain biker as soon as school got out definitely gave me the edge I needed in order to do so well. I knew it would be hard to do well in the XC, since I raced in all mountain and it was combined with the xc racers, like Cody Kaiser.

Off the start I rode at the front with Mark Weir and the leaders to open my legs since I didn't do any openers in my warmup. That was really cool. After that I settled into a nice easier pace up the climb, passing people I didn't expect to such as Nate Byrom and Dain Zaffke. I felt pretty strong. I ended up yoyo-ing with Kelli Emmett (women pro winner) and Kevin Smallman until they dropped me on the false flat/ around the top of the climb. I knew I had a large gap on my field and my legs were cooked after the first climb, so it was really hard to push race pace for the rest of the race. I went as hard as I could comfortably and used the smooth is fast motto for the remainder of the race. I definitely could of pushed harder both technically and physically on rest of the race, but it was hard to motivate and I wanted to finish safely. Highlights of the downhill were Mark Jordan (Giant/Decline) airing by me on the gnarly rock drop section on Polly Creek and following Nathan Riddle (Fluidride/Sram/Santa Cruz) for part of third divide. The visibility and dust made the rocks really hard to see so at one point I hit both rims on the same rock trying to keep up with Mark Jordan and thought I double flatted. It scared the bejeesus out of me and I think I burped some air out of the rear, so I proceeded to go a little harder to finish in case of a slow leak. I also came really close to going off the cliff on first divide on a little dip when my front wheel slid and both feet unclipped. I came in the top 20 overall/pro (70 pros) and won my category by 10 minutes. I definitely could of made up plenty of time hammering the rest of the race as hard as I did on the main climb and pushing it way faster on the technical sections. Whole Athlete completely killed it today and I think the preparation and training we've done has been huge.

Downieville XC
Junior Expert 15-18
1st (2:09:36)

Junior Expert 15-18
1st place 49:21 DH (and 1st place 2:58 combined dh and xc)

Downieville Classic - Jordan Lopez

It is my firm belief that there is not much a rider or racer can do in preparation for the Downieville All-Mountain Classic. Of course, there are long rides that can be done, dieting to cut weight and overall successful race prep. But, climbing that far for that long and being surrounded by 800 of your closest XC & AM buddies can not be duplicated in any training scenario. There then is the question of how hard to go in the XC? Do I push it full out and leave nothing for the 17 mile “DH Race” the following day. Do I conserve my energy and cruise the hill climb (the choice made by many of the DH Racers) or go some pace in-between? In the last moments before the race started, my XC demons got the better of me and I decided to take on the XC at 80%. My rational was that at this pace I would have a descent finish and if everything fell apart on the DH (very common for Downieville), my race weekend would not be a complete bummer. But I knew that with this decision, I would not be allowing myself the complete energy/strength necessary to put down a top DH time, but a strong overall finish is what I was going for.

Then, 2:14:13 later I was done and shocked at how tough the race had been and how many people I had to swim through to finish up at 28th place. The beginning of the race was not kind to me, the starting line moved up the hill about 50 feet and the starting of the race was a mad rush in the confusion of that move. A large chunk of my fellow racers moved past me in the confusion of the start and I had to work to get back through them. After the race I did all I could to get my legs and body ready for the following day…I even got a message. On the other hand, the DH was was a whole different feel and kind of race. This race is formatted as a “Time Trial” with 1 minute splits, so each racer knows exactly when they are off. As I started my race, I immediately noticed the weakness from the prior day’s race in my legs, especially when it came to sprinting out of corners and maintaining top gear speed speed. In my race run I had 3 complete “get-offs” where my bike came to a complete stop and I was left to jump over the bars and running down a hill to save a crash. These instances killed my momentum and were the only wrinkle on a overall great weekend of racing. I came in with a time of 49:55 (2 solid minutes off my best DH time), but a sub 50min time was what I was hoping for on tired legs. I ended up in 37th place which is respectable enough when one looks at the level of competition present. Looking back I am very excited that I was able to finish both XC & DH races with competitive times in both, a overall good finish placing and having nothing broken along the way.



2010 Downieville All-Mountain Race Statistics:

Overall Result – 25th of 68

Mileage – 46 miles

Feet Ascended – 3,700

Feet Descended -10,200

Time in Saddle – 3:04:09

PRO MEN XC

Race time 2:14:13

Place – 28th of 68

PRO MEN DH

Race time – 49:55

Place – 36th of 60

Kingdom Bike

The guys at Kingdom Bike Project UK make some cool stuff, apparently they really love the Podium Pedals, click for full review...

Whistler riding with E.T. and Stod

Last Friday Allen and I did some filming in the park here in Whistler. It was pretty fun to take a break from the usual non-stop runs and work on some lines I had scoped. I nailed all of them perfectly including a pre-jump of the rock drop on Schleyer. I don't think anyone has done this before... The penalty for failure is huge. You will either go over the bars head-on into an uphill rock face or land flat/uphill and explode. Luckily I did neither and I'm still good to race for the upcoming National Champs!

Unfortunately my time here in Whistler is coming to a close, but it will be nice to catch up with friends back home. It has been 2 months now on the road!

You can check out the video from Whistler below.

More updates coming soon...

-Evan

Pro GRT #3 - Northstar, CA

Northstar was the proud host of the Pro Grt round #3 this past weekend. With the WC Giant team, Transition Racing and Santa Cruz Syndicate, along with a bunch of fast locals, it was sure to be a big event! Using the same course as last weekend's Northstar series opener, it was easy for local riders to get up to speed quickly. A pro only step down was added in, as well as a big finish line double. These two features added to not only better viewing for spectators, but a more challenging course for racers. With temperatures in the 80s, it was going to be dry and dusty, again making things more challenging.

Point One Racing's Alex and Jimmy Amaral had a stacked competition. When racing at this level, you fear the worst, but expect the best. Friday was qualifying for both Pro and Cat 1 Junior, giving them a chance to see where they stand for the big show on Sunday. Alex had a blazing time of 4:23 and was your #1 qualifier by over 3 seconds! Jimmy had a decent run and finished about in the middle of the Pro class with a 4:29.

After another day of practice on Saturday with new lines forming, Sunday was race day to put it all together. Amateurs went first, with Cat 1 and Pro going late in the afternoon. By then the course was completely blown out, and there were lines all over the place, braking bumps and case marks. Times seem to have gotten a bit slower. Alex had a bit of a sketchy run and finished with a 4:26, a solid 5th place finish. Jimmy ended up with a 4:31, the course had gotten extremely difficult to race. Awesome work from those guys!

A big thanks to all our athletes, family and friends who made the trip and helped support the cause.


Thanks to Jonathan Cofer













Team Northstar/Giant:

WOW! Northstar showed up for this one! I have to give a huge shout-out to the Northstar trail crew for an AMAZING job on Gypsy and their tiresome fight with the “risk managers”. Despite the resistance, the trail crew were able to put in a “road gap” and a great 38 foot finish line jump. And while the road gap was a pro only line, and suppose to be labeled a “drop” for liability issues, it was a great addition to the course. I know some people were upset they did not get to ride this feature, lets all be thankful for what we did get. This was a progression and a giant step for Northstar and what they get to build. In addition, no major injures over the entire weekend, proving how well built the new features were. Again, AWESOME additions to a great course! The funny thing is the risk managers’ concern over these new features, which are way easier and safer than other death marches such as “Vietnam” or “Slabs”. Those trails scare me! Other additions to Gypsy included huge new berms in the middle which kept the flow going, daily sweeping of course “duff”, and even daily course watering! Northstar put on a good show for the nation. Andy Buckley and Team Big Bear made sure all races ran smooth, and even allowed for extra training on Sunday morning due to the long gondola lift line. Other than that all races were on time and results were efficient and quick.

To be completely honest my race left me wanting; in the moments following my race run I was at a loss and grasping at explanations for my poor finishing time. Now, with the blessing of hindsight, I see now that there were several sections I could have put forth more effort in my run. For example, I could have gotten more loose in the corners and got off the brakes into and through the corners and gotten lower on the bike. In the practice runs leading up to the race I felt fast and competitive, but once my race started I reverted back to my old bad habits of coming into the corners to fast for traction and loosing all of my exit speed and playing the game of catchup. This course does not reward this style of riding and my result is the proof – 64th.

Jordan Lopez


Saturday
Jon came out victorious in the PRO Men's 4X race beating some of the top Nationally Ranked 4X racers like JD Swanguen and Ryan Condrashoff. To top it all off, Jon accomplished all of this on his GIANT Reign Trail Bike which boasts 6" of travel front and rear.

Jon Wilson


Sunday
It was time for downhill and both Jon and I felt up to the high level of competition. Because of his crash in the seeding run, Jon was one of the first racers to set off down the hill and he set the early time to beat with a 4:19. A bit later I set off down the hill and had a variety of issues and because of them I ended off the pack and into 64th place. Jon was able to hold onto a 19th pace finish and with the level of competition present, he was very excited with this result.


Team Geronimo:

The Buell brothers made the trip out from Colorado to race with fellow teammates Eichhorn and Pitts. Graeme finished an impressive 14th place! Cody was 17th, Brian 29th and Michael 47th, respectively.

Brian Buell


Cody Eichhorn


Graeme Pitts


Racer photos by WM Smith

Full results