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