Mountain Bike Racing and the Upside of Global Warming
The best professional road cyclists in the world are competing for the maillot jeune on the rolling plains and brutal mountain passes of Europe right now, but this weekend, we've got our own battle for cycling supremacy going on right here in the Bay Area.
Today through Sunday, road cyclists from Pro down through Cat 5 and beyond can compete in the Cougar Mountain Classic on and around the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma. As an added bonus, the Cougar is playing host to the USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships. That's the Nationals baby, right here, almost within sight of Mt. Tam, mountain biking's Hoboken.
The Bay Area has been no stranger to great road racing the last few years, with the now defunct Grand Prix of San Francisco and the first four stages of this year's inaugural Tour of California, but this is the first time a Bay-adjacent county has hosted the mountain bike Nationals. And it never would have happened if not for bad weather and dumb luck.
The Nationals are usually held in September every year, but USA Cycling moved them up to the third week of July this year to increase their relevance to the annual racing schedule. As the last official qualifying event before the Nationals, the Cougar was also moved up to July.
Photoshopped Cougar Mountain Classic racers from Tech-Fall.com.
This winter, undoubtedly somehow because of global warming, the regular venue for the Nationals, Mammoth, took a 664-inch dumping. The subsequent late and violent snowmelt runoff wreaked havoc on the trails and in April, USA Cycling made an executive decision to abandon Mammoth and move on to Plan B.
Uh, yeah. Plan B. Well, it turns out Plan B was a little fuzzy. As late as the first week of May, USA Cycling was still searching for an alternate site. To their credit, USA Cycling wanted to keep the event in Cali, but didn't seem to have many choices. Equally threatened, the Cougar, a relatively young event that has been marketing hard to raise its profile as a multiday, multievent cycling festival on par with the Sea Otter, was looking for somebody to throw them a lifeline too. If the Nats had gone out of state, the Cougar would have taken a rim-tacoing hit to the business model.
In a marriage of convenience, the Cougar got their chocolate in the USA Cycling's peanut butter, and we in the Bay Area are the beneficiaries.
Yesterday in the men's cross-country pro championship, riding for Kona, #48 bib Ryan Trebon out of Ventura, California was the Cinderella story, taking an early lead and never looking back en route to his huge upset win over the likes of four-time defending national champion Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski of Team Subaru/Gary Fisher, Adam Craig of Team Giant, Jeremiah Bishop of Team Trek/VW, and Todd Wells of Team GT. Local smokey Barry Wicks from Santa Cruz, also a Kona rider, beat out the big names for second place. Fellow NoCal stars Aren Timmel and Tim Olson also finished in the top 20. Travis Brown of Trek defended his marathon championship title, nipping teammate Chris Eatough by just 13 seconds after racing for over four and a half hours.
The women's cross-country pro championship produced a similar result as Georgia Gould of team Luna Women picked up the first win of her professional career over the likes of Shonny VanLandingham and defending champion and Fairfax native Mary McConneloug. In the women's marathon event, Louise Kobin of San Jose finished second riding for X-Fusion
Upsets on the rolling 7.7-mile Sonoma cross-country circuit (which the pros did three times and the marathoners did nine times) weren't unexpected. The course differs greatly from the high-altitude, steeper, and more technical championship courses in Mammoth. Favoring a European style of riding that emphasizes overall power and speed, it was no surprise that the Sonoma course selected for a new set of winning riders. For their triumphs, Trebon and Gould each pulled down a whopping one grand -- that's like Michelle Wie's toenail polish per diem.
Cross-country action continues today with the Expert through Beginner categories. Also on tap for the weekend, amateur road racing, as well as national championship MTB races in the Super-D, Downhill, and Mountain Cross disciplines. In addition, the Cougar features the usual cycling festival fare, including kids races and a vendors expo. A couple of cool differentiators for the Cougar are the vintage bike concourse and a blind mountain biker who will compete in the Super-D today. Also pretty cool, yesterday Luna Chix hosted a skills clinic for women featuring two of the all-time best, Alison Dunlap and Marla Streb. Da-yamn.
Thanks global warming!