Action from Crankworx Colorado’s 2008 slopestyle competition in Winter Park, CO.

Filmed and edited by Noah Sears of Western Slopestyle Productions (HTTP://westernslopestyle.blogspot.com/)

Contact:
Noah Sears
Sales Manager
Over the Edge Sports - Fruita, CO
Noah@otesports.com

This past Sunday, July 20, was Northstar at Lake Tahoe’s 2nd race of the series.

The course was Boondocks, a black diamond trail, that is almost as sandy as the beach. This trail has a nice rock drop, a steep rock slab, tight turns, LOTS of rocks, and a few jumps. A perfect course for the Versus Trigger.

Saturday morning we watched a bit of the W.E. Rock Crawling event at Donner, then headed to Northstar for some practice time down Boondocks.

On Sunday, the race started at Noon. My drop in time was 19 min after the start. I was up on “the rock” with the beeps about to start, when someone yelled out, “She has a flat!”. I looked at my rear tire and it was completely flat! Instantly disappointed, I pulled off before my run started. The timer told me I would be able to race at the end. That gave me over 2 hours, and I got excited again…I get to race!

My race run ended up being worse then my practice runs…I ended up in 4th place, with a stack and dropping my bike in 3 super sandy turns. Pretty sloppy!

Although, not stoked on my race run, I had a blast. Northstar did a great job with the race and everybody seemed to really like the course. I’m looking forward to the next Northstar race!

Photo Credits:
Bikeguy@charter.net

Firestone Walker, Santa Barbara California

This years NMBS #3 race was held in Los Olivos, California. The course itself was pretty fun, it was some what fast and wide open. Had a couple of jumps here and there, and also had this pretty cool tree section, which dumped right into this flat out sprint to the finish. At first i was a little worried about the flatness of the course, and being on an 8.5 inch bike, i was definitely at a disadvantage to the other competitors on there smaller travel bikes. After practicing and walking the course a few times on friday, i was prepared to race on saturday. When race run came around, i couldn’t wait to bomb my trigger down this trail. The race run went pretty well, the trigger ate up the little man made rock garden, flew through the berms, and seemed to eat up every bump that it came in contact with. Then when it came to the flat pedal section, the trigger pedaled great like I was on a shorter travel bike. After sprinting to the end, I had finished with a 2:05, nearly 4 seconds faster than the nearest competitor in the expert men 19-24 class to put me on the very top of the podium.
by: Chase Bohn.

I decided to race the dual slalom this year at Sea Otter using my Versus Jab, which is set up for dirt jumping (Single speed and rear brake only).

I was a bit apprehensive at first considering most of the slalom bikes I have seen are larger, have a rear shock and run a derailleur.

I went with the gears I had on it (31 tooth up front, 14 in the rear) and raped my all-mountain bike for a front brake.

I definitely needed a better gear ratio because I was spun out. I was pedaling so much with no resistance that I felt I was slowing myself down!

I was stoked on how the Jab handled on the course. Having the smaller bike was so much fun…I could throw it around effortlessly!

I placed 4th…losing out of the finals round by nobbies!

I plan to change my gearing and use the Versus Jab to race dual slalom for the rest of this season.

Dirt Jumper on weekdays, DS bike on weekends!

(Note: The derailleur rule has been eliminated from the NORBA rule book (just found out). You can pretty much just slap a front brake on your dirt jumper and race Dual Slalom or Mountaincross…yay!)

The last couple of weeks I’ve been traveling around Europe for the nissan qashqai series. The first stop was in Milan, Italy where I made it into the finals but my runs didn’t come together and I ended up in 15th. The day after that event we went to the Nissan Town Hill race and slopestyle event. It was a fun course with some step ups, drops and dirt jumps. I ended up taking second place at that comp. After Italy we made our way to Madrid, Spain for the second stop of the tour. The course there was so much fun. It had a jump that went into a berm to step up then a drop into a four pack of jumps. The level of riding was really high so it was a good comp for spectators. I ended up taking 11th at the comp. Now were on our way to the third comp in Munich. I’ll post soon on how its going.