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MTB News & racing round-up for October 21, 2005Edited by Steve Medcroft Welcome to our regular round-up of what's happening in the dirt. Feel free to send feedback, news and gossip to mtb@cyclingnews.com Alison Sydor wraps-up season with Roc d'Azur winBy Steve Medcroft Canada 's Alison Sydor has had an impressive career in mountain biking. In World Cup, World Championship and Olympic competition, she's posted something like 22 wins, 30 seconds and more than a dozen thirds; over 75 top fives in all. 2005 has been no exception. The three-time World Champion and Olympic Silver medalist won the NORBA series cross-country opener in Texas and was in the mix at NORBA's, World Cups, marathons and even Trans-Rockies the rest of the season. So, at 39, when many athletes would be thinking about a career in coaching or industry, after a season filled with a variety of mountain-bike disciplines, Sydor closed out her season with the Roc D'Azur World Cup marathon in France. "Roc D'Azur is this amazing bike festival," she said from her home in North Vancouver , British Columbia on Wednesday. "Over 14,000 people raced in several different events. There was a four cross course and North Shore style ramps and they had a huge consumer and industry expo like Interbike." Sydor says she discovered the event at the end of the 2003 season. "Two years ago, I was chasing UCI points for the Olympics and finished off my year here." Roc D'Azur featured cross country and marathon racing for elite racers. With the marathon earning World Cup designation for 2005, Sydor skipped the shorter race in favour of the 82-kilometer long course. Conditions were perfect, she says. "Fall is coming to the rest of Europe and North America so getting to take in the last bit of warm weather with a week on the Mediterranean coast is really nice. We started early (8am) and it did get warm around noon but the course was generally dry and sandy - sort of like riding in New Mexico. We started by the ocean, rode inland on an epic loop then finished by the sea again; it's the kind of place where even if you have a bad day, you're going to have a great ride." All categories rode the same loop. A huge men's field was let onto the course 15 minutes before the women. Normally, this wouldn't present an obstacle, but Roc D'Azur organizers mixed the upper men's categories and didn't limit the first wave to only World Cup racers. The result was that the head of the women's field had to fight their way though traffic. "This being an important marathon, the organizers still have a few bugs to work out," Sydor says. "And although it is a cool aspect of this sport that all the categories race the same course at the same time, it was hard for the women to have to come through traffic - we got bogged in some of the singletrack." Sydor says she planned to stick with a lead group until the final 20 kilometres but found herself alone early. "I knew that last twenty k well but I felt really good from the start and at four kilometres, I hit the first singletrack and got a gap. I never knew where people were behind me so I just rode my own race. With five kilometres left, I found out I was only a minute ahead so I went hard." Her final effort earned Sydor her second major win and her only World Cup in 2005. Following Roc D'Azur, Sydor flew home to B.C. and plans to "take a couple of weeks to do all the things I've put off while I was traveling and racing" before setting down her goals for 2006. Former collegiate national champ takes Moab solo winBy Steve Medcroft One of the last races in the competitive calendar for many endurance pros, the 24 Hours of Moab ran its eleventh competition this past weekend. Last year's winner, former U.S. 24-Hour Solo National Champion Nat Ross (Subaru-Gary Fisher) came into the weekend with an almost zen-like approach to the defense of his title. "I got eight hours of sleep (Friday night) and awoke just in time to head out to the site," he said in an email to sponsors and supporters. "I wasn't nervous, but I was in a far-away trance to keep myself distanced from the painful game I was about to play." His strategy was to mark his chief challengers and run at World Cup pace in the first few hours. "My main competition (would be) Anthony Colby and Jimi Mortenson," he said. Mortenson was a known quantity; Ross trains with Mortenson in Vail, Colorado . Colby, a Durango-based elite-level Cat1 road racer and former MTB collegiate champion in his first 24-hour solo effort, was the wild card. Ross says his race started out well and he built an early lead. "I was hydrating properly and riding super smooth then, out of nowhere, Anthony came by me on lap six." Ross then suffered a damaging pit mishap while Colby rode a flawless set of fast laps on the challenging course to ultimately win the race. Even Colby himself says he was surprised at the win. "I never really thought I could actually beat him until the last couple of laps. I just kept riding and it happened." The twist in Colby's story is not so much that he won his first 24-hour against a world-class competitor, but that six years ago he could barely form a sentence due to brain surgery he underwent to treat seizures; surgery he chose over a treatment that involved medication he says would have held him back as a bike racer, was risky. We caught up with the twenty-five year old as he traveled from his day job in construction to his home in Durango . Cyclingnews: You're a road racer. Had you planned to race Moab all season? Anthony Colby: I've been racing as an elite the last two years; for Target Training (managed by Tom Schuler, the force behind Saturn and Quark). I had plans to do Moab about a month before the actual race. I've been racing road all season and wanted to do a couple of MTB races at the end of the year; something fun. I've done Moab the last two years; the first time as a last-minute addition to a team that needed a rider and last year as a duo (Colby and partner Miles Venzara came second). CN: You seemed comfortable on the course? AC: The course is pretty rough and tumble but your do it so many tomes, you learn where the lines are. There are parts where you can roll or get a draft and there are parts where you have to dig deep and hustle. CN: Is Moab , being a mountain bike race, a return to your roots (Colby was a double national champion; cross country and short track)? AC: Mountain biking is my background. I started racing seriously when I came to college at Fort Lewis ; riding in the wake of (alumni) Todd Wells. I've been out of school couple of years and switched the focus to road though so yes, Moab is a return to my roots. CN: This was your first solo 24-hour? AC: It was. I did it really to have that full 24-hour experience; to take it the next level from duo. I didn't really know what to expect but I do feel like I was prepared; I worked hard to put together a support staff – mechanic, extra bike and all that. Three weeks after my last road race, I switched my training focus to longer, epic mountain bike rides. I took off quite a bit of time from work so I could train. But with this kind of event, it's tough to know how all that preparation is going to pan out. Anything can happen over the course of 24-hours. But everything went smoothly for me. Support was awesome. I had no major mechanicals. I felt good. CN: You passed Ross about six hours into the race? AC: My plan was to try and keep my stops as brief as possible. For the first couple of laps, I even took bottles, food and bike changes on the fly. I was hoping to stay on until night, when the race got more challenging, and use the pits then. And the most important thing I focused on was eating; that was priority. So I was just riding and I passed Nat while he was in his pit. I wasn't even sure it had happened until somebody told me he was behind me. I never really thought I could actually beat him until the last couple of laps; I just kept riding. I wasn't sure how he was going to react. I was expecting him to come up behind me. CN: He says he rode with you in sight for three laps but never did regain the advantage. Knowing you had the race in the bag, how did that last lap feel? AC: I checked in before noon on what I thought was my last lap and they told me I had to go out again to preserve the lead so my first reaction when they told me was ‘what?' But some guys rode with me and we took it easy and it was sweet; a victory lap. CN: Will you defend this victory in 2006? AC: I would definitely like to do it again; it's just a matter of where the road season takes me. If there's a chunk of time in the road season, I'd like to do a couple of races like this. Duo Pro team outpedals all at 24 Hours of MoabFor the second year in a row at the 24 Hours of Moab, a men's Duo Pro team tallied up more laps than any other team in the race. Jay Henry and Mike Janelle (Ford/Tokyo Joe's) rode 21 laps on the 15-mile, technically-challenging course to prevail over categories filled with brawny four-man expert and four-person co-ed pro/am teams. "We just rode a smooth, steady race," said Janelle. "With this course you can lose a lot of power in some sections but we kept a rhythm so that our lap times were consistently between 1:05 and 1:15." Runner-up four-man expert team Rocky Mountain Hammer Gel 1 racked up 20 laps compared to Janelle and Henry's 21 laps or, 315 off-road miles with 28,560 feet of climbing completed in 24:41:35. 59 men and 13 women competed in the solo category and brought this year's cash prize total to $9,735. Of that amount $3,505 went to first place for men and $1,073 went to first place for women. The awards rank as the largest cash prizes in the history of 24-hour racing and are expected to grow even more for next year's race. Total amount in cash prizes and commemorative items awarded overall at this year's 24 Hours of Moab is equal to $95,600. The total amount of climbing for this year's 24 Hours of Moab equaled 1,365.15 vertical miles. Compare that to Mount Everest, which is 29,035 feet or 5.49 miles high; racers at this year's 24 Hours of Moab climbed Everest 248.7 times. Total mileage for this year's 24 Hours of Moab measured 79,023 miles with 1,365.15 vertical miles of climbing. Now consider the circumference of the earth at 24,902.4 miles and 24 Hours of Moab racers circled the globe 3.2 times. 1,391 competitors joined the race with an estimated 4,500 total participants overall. Roland Green interview: Time to do something else
Former MTB world champion Roland Green has decided to retire at the age of 31. Green, who won his world titles in 2001 and 2002 believes he's lost the desire to give it 100 per cent, saying, "after world's I just wasn't feeling right. You have to give it 100 per cent when you're racing, and I wasn't - so I decided I shouldn't be doing it anymore." Cyclingnews' Les Clarke found out why this was the case. The Canadian rider had come back from a six-month drugs suspension retroactively imposed in March 2005 and was racing with the Kona team, where he was enjoying himself, "I was happy to ride with Kona. It was where I started racing pro - they're Canadian, and they have a different attitude to racing - I had lots of fun. It was also cool to race with some teammates I hadn't raced with in a while." Green said the team was very understanding of his decision and respected the fact that "an athlete's wishes come first". Green's late-season results were beginning to reflect the fact he was enjoying his racing again. "It was starting to come together near the end of the season - at the NORBA final I felt like I could win it, but I missed a couple of feeds and had some cramping problems. Then I thought I could have a good world's, but after double flatting it didn't quite work out." It was after this world's race, however, that Green decided his time as a pro was finished. "So many things weren't clicking, and now there are other things I want to do," he said Crocodile Trophy coverage: Aussie underdog Hansen takes on world cup championBy John Flynn
He may be the reigning Crocodile Trophy champion but Australian Adam Hansen will go into the 13-day mountain bike stage race - considered one of the world's hardest MTB races - with ‘Aussie underdog' status, when the 2005 event gets underway in Townsville, North Queensland today. Hansen will once again lead the will lead the Cairns Coconut Caravan Resort team. Attending yesterday's pre-race briefing, he was matter of fact about his intentions in 2005, despite the fact he will be up against UCI World Cup Marathon Cross Country Champion, Mauro Bettin of Italy, who will head the rival Felt-Shimano Dream Team. "I didn't come here to get second," Hansen told Cyclingnews. "I'm aiming to win it, but it will be harder than last year." The 24 year old Australian, who had what he described as a "terrible year" racing in Europe with the Austrian based Elk Haus road team in 2005, is desperate to finish the year on a positive note. To help the cause, Hansen has brought with him two team-mates from Austria, including the well credentialed Stefan Rucker, who alongside Australian Joe McDonnell will be key supports. Firing the first shots in what is sure to be a psychological war spanning the duration of the race, Hansen claimed the rival Felt-Shimano Dream Team lacked the edge of their 2004 lineup, which was headed by ‘the crazy man' Italy's Alberto Elli. Follow the Crocodile Trophy here. Sauser to Specialized29 year-old Swiss cross-country racer and UCI World Cup Champion Christoph Sauser will join Liam Killeen and Sabine Spitz at the Specialized mountain bike team for 2006 and beyond. After 10 years as a pro, Sauser said he was interested in riding on one of the Specialized machines. "Once I saw Liam racing a Carbon Epic this season, I knew I had to connect with Specialized for the future," said the Swiss rider. "Plus, they have a long history of working closely with their racers to develop new products, and that's exciting." Sauser will also rely on Specialized shoes, saddles, helmets and an array of other equipment. Specialized Team Captain Ned Overend was particularly happy with the arrival of the Swiss star, "With a number of World Cup wins last year, Christoph is definitely at the top of his career," said the 1990 World Champion, "He seems genuinely excited about pulling on a red Specialized jersey and crushing the competition." Sauser, who is due to finish his successful 2005 season at the Roc d'Azur marathon in the south of France this coming weekend, will have a specific focus on the UCI XC and MX World Cups and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Irmiger signs with Subaru-Gary FisherBreakout rider and newlywed (to U.S. Cross Country National Champion Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski) Heather Irmiger recently inked her first factory deal; with JHK's Subaru-Gary Fisher team. The Boulder, Colorado racer, who won her first NORBA cross country in Brian Head, Utah in 2005, was previously sponsored by Tokyo Joe's and Schwalbe. "I began discussing plans for next year with the team at Brian Head, but really began nailing down details between Mammoth and Interbike," she said on Thursday. "My general program for 2006 will be to race the full NORBA national schedule along with major races such as Sea Otter." Irmiger also says she hopes to "dabble in a few world cups, looking toward the Olympics in 2008" but her actual schedule is yet to be determined. Irmiger says the move will allow her to focus full time on racing in 2006. Global MTB racing round-up
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