Five American Olympic hopefuls selected for Beijing Test Event

Three men and two women were selected this week by USA Cycling to represent the US at the upcoming mountain bike Olympic Test Event to be held in Beijing on Saturday, September 22. The riders are expected to make the trip to Beijing directly from the UCI World Cup Finals which will take place on Saturday, September 15 in Maribor, Slovenia.

Adam Craig (Giant), Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Subaru - Gary Fisher), Todd Wells (GT), Willow Koerber (Subaru - Gary Fisher), and Georgia Gould (Luna) were chosen based on their 2007 UCI World Cup Performances.

Craig, recently crowned US national cross country champion, is the top American in the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup standings, ranked 18th. Horgan-Kobelski and Wells, who represented the US in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, are ranked second and third respectively among Americans.

Koerber and Gould are ranked sixth and seventh respectively in the World Cup standings, and both have notably posted top-five finishes at World Cups this season.

Absent from the selections are riders like Jeremiah Bishop (Trek / VW), who's recently regained form following illness that kept him out of two June World Cups and national cross country champion Mary McConneloug (Kenda / Seven), who represented the US at the 2004 Games.