Press Releases
Day 4 Recap - Sea Otter Classic
Molten heat with occasional light breezes brought out the crowds for all four days of Sea Otter. Veteran participants wandered around gaping in disbelief at the weather while newcomers buckled at the knees by the enormity of the event. Upsets in Downhill and Dual Stunts kept fans engaged while it was all business for Specialized and LUNA, which plucked podium spots like they were low-hanging fruit.
By MARK HAGEN
USA Cycling Pro Mountain Bike Cross Country Presented by Sho-Air
MONTEREY, Calif. The Sea Otter Classic Pro XC, long known as one of the longer XC's on the national circuit, was shortened due to the unseasonably hot temperatures today by UCI officials. With afternoon temps easily in the mid 90's, the original 38-mile course, was adjusted to a single lap, 19-mile course for the women, and a 29-mile course (19 mile lap + a shortened 10-mile lap) for the men.
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| Christoph Sauser Photo: Brightroom.com |
Prior to the 1:30 pm start time, many pro athletes were not concerned with the heat or disappointed with the change.
"I would prefer to do the longer race but the fast guys are the fast guys and this should not affect the win," stated Saturday's Short Track winner Todd Wells (Specialized). Their tune quickly changed after the start with temps on the tarmac reaching 92F for the particularly large 155-strong, pro men's field.
Team Specialized took control of the race early on with World Champion, Christoph Sauser, leading the first paved climb to a bottlenecked dirt funnel that forced anyone after 15th place to a complete stop. Ryan Trebon (Kona), consistent with his strong start at Saturday's Short Track, held on to Sauser's wheel through the section but coming into the bottom of the Skyline climb, things changed with Burry Stander (Specialized) taking the lead and Wells in a close second with Sauser in third. At the top coming out of the grinding five-mile, windy fire road, Sauser again quickly took control and opened up a 2-minute gap over Wells and Sid Taberlay (Sho-Air/Specialized). Max Plaxton (Sho-Air/Specialized) and Sam Shultz (Subaru/Gary Fisher) both took chase in an exciting dice to work together and catch Taberlay. Following the lead five, a strong group of six chased with a 1.5-minute gap with a dusty and battered Trebon, who crashed on the back side of the course, leading a pack hungry to maintain top ten status.
Close to the race finish, a previously confident and fresh looking Wells flatted out on the last climb at the end of the 10-mile portion of the course.
"Kind of a slow leak that I tried to fix with C02 but eventually had to replace the tube," said Wells.
That gave Plaxton and Taberlay the opportunity for a podium finish. Eventually it was Sauser taking first with nearly a 5-minute gap, followed by second place Taberlay, with Plaxton in third and Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Subaru/Gary Fisher) in fourth.
"I was pretty hot at the beginning….but was more than happy it was shorter," commented Sauser about the heat.
Gould-medal finish
The women's pro field also started in the heat of the day just 15 minutes after the men's race with Lene Byberg (Specialized) taking control at the top of the first climb and making the important first shot through to the dirt. After the winding single track, ruts and dusty conditions filtered out the riffraff in the 48-racer field, it was Georgia Gould (LUNA) leading the final climb by 1.5 minutes.
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| Georgia Gould Photo: Brightroom.com |
"That last fire road is a good section for me, I was feeling pretty strong on it in a pre-ride so I saved a little bit of energy for that and there was a nice headwind that kept me nice and cool on the way up," Gould said.
With Byberg and Catherine Pendrel (LUNA) working together and jockeying for position on the windy fire road section for second and third, it made for an interesting scenario to attempt to catch Gould.
"I couldn't follow her (Gould) in the downhill and the flat sections because she just got those seconds and from there she could just find her speed" Byberg said. Kelly Emmett (Giant) gave a valiant chase for the podium but, exposed in the wind, was not able to catch the Byberg-Pendrel duo.
At the finish, Gould took first by more than a minute with Byberg taking the second place spot and Pendrel in third. Commenting on the pivotal moment where she took the lead Gould said, "I found myself at the front before that (final climb) and Katerina (Nash – LUNA) was right behind me and she said, 'We have a little bit of a gap!' and I didn't know if it was her or not, I just heard 'gap' and I didn't want to work with someone who wasn't my teammate. I blew a corner and she went by and I was like, 'Oh great, now I get to follow Katerina because she's the fastest out there on the downhill,' so I got to ride behind her and then she let me by on the climb and that was sort of where I rode by myself."
Top 3 Women:
- Georgia Gould (LUNA 1:22:45.6
- Lene Byberg (Specialized) 1:23:52.05
- Catherine Pendrel (LUNA) 1:23:59.5
Top 3 Men:
- Christoph Sauser (Specialized) 2:02:54.3
- Sid Taberlay (Sho-Air/Specialized) 2:07:01.9
- Max Plaxton (Sho-Air/Specialized) 2:07:28.5
For a complete list of results, click HERE.
By WENDY BOOHER
Hot, parching conditions scorched the Sea Otter downhill course while top downhill racers burned up the fast, dusty track beneath them. UK national champion, Tracy Moseley (Trek), covered some bad moves with hard pedaling while Mick Hannah (GT) succeeded in reversing last week's runner-up finish to Greg Minaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate) by putting Minaar in second instead.
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| Mick Hannah Photo: VeloNews/Brad Kaminski |
Both Hannah and Minaar admitted to mistakes near the start of their runs; Hannah was just able to slice away more time on recovery than Minaar.
"My run started off reasonably well – I made a little bit of a bobble at the top but other than that, the rest of it was pretty good," Hannah said. "I didn't feel like I had enough – I knew I'd done good but I didn't think I'd stay ahead of Greg. He's really strong at the moment and he's coming off winning the World Cup last year but it worked out all right – it was only a tenth of a second but it worked out well."
Hannah likened Sea Otter's downhill course a bit to the one in Canberra, Australia, which is where the world mountain bike championships will take place later this year. With the world title clearly in focus, training for Hannah has been a mixture of BMX, road riding, and, of course, downhill.
Hannah's time to beat today was a white-hot 2:08.1
Absent from the podium was world downhill champion, Gee Atherton (Animal/Commencal), who suffered a crash that took him out of the podium chase. Atherton might have agreed with Greg Minaar's comment after losing so narrowly to Hannah, "That's racing."
Power and fitness dominated downhill but despite her superlative skills, one racer became victim of her own racing talents. A fit, fast Melissa Buhl (KHS) looked to double her wins for the weekend, after having won yesterday's dual slalom but was delayed on her way to the top of the podium by the racer in front of her on the finishing stretch. A visibly frustrated Buhl finished .6 seconds off the winning pace of Moseley, who returned to Sea Otter this year after a four year break to collect the podium's top spot.
"On this track everyone is pretty equal at the top, there's not much technical stuff to separate you from everybody else so a lot of it comes down to who can put the pedal down where it needs to," Moseley said. "A track like this - where there's so much where you need to carry your speed - that's the important thing here: just staying smooth and carrying speed."
Despite unclipping on some jumps near the start, which burned time, Moseley sprinted to the finish with the best time of 2:21.6.
"I definitely wasn't too happy with the run but I tried to pedal hard where I could and I was obviously just good enough," Moseley said. "I think maybe it was unlucky for Melissa who got caught up with someone so maybe I was pretty lucky with that. But it was a good race and I'm pretty happy with a win at Sea Otter."
Top 3 Women:
- Tracy Moseley (Trek) 2:21.6
- Melissa Buhl (KHS) 2:22.4
- Kathy Pruitt (Jamis) 2:27.7
Top 3 Men:
- Mick Hannah (GT) 2:08.1
- Greg Minaar (Santa Cruz Syndicate) 2:08.2
- Andrew Neethling (Trek) 2:08.8
For a complete list of results, click HERE.
By CORBY ANDERSON
Canadian rider Brandon Semenuk (Trek) used every ounce of energy that he could muster to pour on the pedals and shred the competition Sunday in the SRAM Dual Stunt Pro race on an unseasonably hot central California day.
Dual Stunt is a format that pits riders against one another head-to-head in a timed race back and forth across a 400-foot dirt and wood obstacle course.
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| Brandon Semenuk |
"Stunts," per se, are not scored as points and have no bearing on the winners, as each race consists of two separate sprint heats that combine the time differential of each, although there were plenty of random back flips, no-handed landings, and other freeride tricks thrown in to entertain the sun-baked crowd.
Semenuk, atop his garishly glowing neon green and orange bike, soaked up the transitions between the dirt and wooden box sections of the Jeff-Lenosky-and-Kyle-Ebbett-designed course with startling ease, sailing to victory in the final race by airing over the 10-foot high steel shipping container well ahead of second place finisher Kyle Strait (Team America/Specialized).
Top-seeded Semenuk earned a victory check of $750 for his efforts, which was some solace after the day's bracket of eight races left the lanky 17-year-old exhausted to the point of near collapse due to effects of the searing heat.
"The sun was getting to me. I was just trying to reserve all energy, sit in the shade in between races and cool back down. When it was time to race, I just kept my head down and pedaled away," said Semenuk, a Whistler resident who won the first Sea Otter Classic title of his young career in an event that he didn't even plan on entering.
"He was just here on vacation, here to spectate, and I talked him into it," said Ebbett, who announced and organized the event. "Brandon used that ultra smooth style to his advantage today. He had power, but he used more of his grace and skill to win today," added Ebbett.
The riding styles and physicality of the two finalists could not be more different, as the long and lanky Semenuk deftly poured himself over the course which lay littered with geometric wooden structures known alternately as "coffin boxes," "nipples," and "dragon spines." After negotiating the array of tall and angular boxes, the riders made the turn at the end of the course on an upturned half-pipe known as a "curved wall" and sprinted back through the course to the finish, which lay on the other side of the ramped container box.
Strait, the defending champion from Costa Mesa, California, was more bull than rabbit as the linebacker-shaped rider muscled his way up and over the obstacles in a show of brute strength laced with subtle touches of flow.
"This is my third different event in two days. I have been training more for World Cup downhill racing, and I was definitely tired, but I felt pretty good. I raced in the downhill just twenty minutes before this race," said Strait, who takes home a $500 check for his work on the Dual Stunt Course.
"Little movements here and there make a big difference when you are tired, and I sort of lost my fluidity in the end. He (Semenuk) ran pretty mistake-free on both runs," added Strait.
Third-place went to course co-creator Lenosky (Giant), who celebrated his 38th birthday by competing in a field of fifteen racers (one dropped out after a nasty mountain bike accident earlier in the day) who were still in diapers when he started racing. "The guy I lost to (Semenuk, in the semi's), I have twenty years on," said Lenosky. "To hang with any of these racers, I'm happy. I can't complain!"
"Brandon is pretty much showing that he can do just about anything on a bike. The kid is just beyond. He is very impressive," said Lenosky of the victorious young phenom.
Riding their heavily-stickered, hard-tail mountain bikes with seats slung so low that it looks like they are riding on the back tire, the dirt-jumping Dual Stunt contestants stood out as heavily tattooed, ragged t-shirt, crusty-blue-jean-and-studded-belt-wearing individualists amongst the sea of skin-tight, ultra-breathable logo-wearing biking contestants from other Sea Otter events.
Semenuk exemplified the laid-back, hard-core style when he was asked to don the yellow victor's jersey for the podium photographs. The instant that he left the stage, and with the envelope containing his day's winnings sticking haphazardly out of his front pocket, and his sprocket shaped first-place medal hanging from a lanyard out of the other, he immediately tore off the prized jersey and jammed it into the back pocket of his rockstar tight, mud splattered grey jeans.
For a complete list of results, click HERE.
By WENDY BOOHER
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| Gold Diggers |
Vincent Lombardi of Los Angeles lowered the lap time scored by Geoffrey Montague yesterday to take possession of the GT Golden Bike. While results are still preliminary, Lombardi's time of 1:17 and then some could add up to be at least a full minute less than Geoffrey Montague's time of 1:19.08, which he clocked during yesterday's amateur races.
For his efforts, Lombardi and a friend will fly to Texas next month, be put up in a hotel, get a $250 Sugoi gift certificate and a GT Golden Race jersey to distinguish himself as the new guy to beat – all courtesy go GT Bikes.
To win the GT Golden Bike is simple: just be the first non-pro rider to cross the finish line at an officially sanctioned race in the Golden Race Series. For more information or to get dazzled by the GT Golden Bike, visit: www.gtisgolden.com
For a complete list of results, click HERE.
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About Sea Otter Classic, Inc.
The 19th Annual Sea Otter Classic will be held April 16-19, 2009 at the Laguna Seca Recreation Area, Monterey, Calif. The four-day "Celebration of Sport" is considered the world's largest cycling festival, hosting nearly 10,000 professional and amateur athletes and 50,000 fans. More information can be found at www.seaotterclassic.com or by calling 800-218-8411.
CONTACT:
Wendy Booher
617-308-2500
wendy@boohermedia.com
Donna Brown (local media)
831-905-1764
donna@seaotterclassic.com
Chris Worden (Web-related)
208-305-1702
chris@seaotterclassic.com
