Week 2 in the books

The morning rain dried up in time, and 122 eager racers got to enjoy a long course at Valmont. We're still playing around with the course start - that hole shot was very important this week, with only about 50 yards to the single track. I think I only saw one crash as a result of the hard braking and crowding there though.

8-year-old Carden King started things off, showing what Boulder racing is all about. He improved over his 3rd place last week to win the kids race this week, and then jumped in the Juniors race. 11-year-old Torin Bickmore also moved up from 3rd to 1st in the Juniors race. Both of these young riders have the overall lead in their respective categories, though Bjorn Riley is just 1 point down on Torin.

After the Kids race, Sam and Beckett Cassan found where the mud was still nice and wet. Sarah from the Daily Camera included them in her article, which you can read here.

Ksenia Lepikhina has been tearing up dirt at short track for years, and now she's gotten her mother, Marina, into it. Marina took the win in the Women's B's too! Not bad for her first CU Short Track race. CU racer Garrett Brown is in good form after the collegiate road season; he won the Men's C race by a good 10 seconds over Tony Prete. The Men's B's had an intense chase for the top 5 spots. Junior racer Wyatt Svarczkopf had a slow start, but managed to move from about 6th to 2nd before the end of the race. He may have been only 1 lap away from catching Stephen Shepherd, who never let off the gas at all to earn that victory. The single speeds had a lot of shuffling around throughout the race, but Tom Hopper came out on top for the 2nd week in a row. Mark Beaudry held a really long wheelie across the entire finishing straight, rolling in for 5th.

In the Women's A's Ksenia was on Deidre York's wheel until 4 laps to go. Deidre, who's gearing up for worlds, gave us a preview of her form as she then took off, winning by a 20 second gap over Ksenia, who was another 20 seconds ahead of Tammy Sadle. In the Men's A's, Brady Kappius got another win. But he didn't get to relax on his birthday. Sam Morrison was within 5-10 seconds of Brady the entire race. Zane Godby kept things interesting holding out single dollar bills for riders to grab coming through. (John Mansell was hoping for an ice cream prime - maybe next time). Will Nabours jumped up to the A's after winning the B's last week. He managed a very solid 8th, and one of those dollars from Zane.
Dejan Smaic was out there taking photos again, and hopefully we'll have a link to those soon. In the mean time, check out the results and photos from last week.