From Joe: HS MTB Race Report and Photos

Here's some photos for the Blog. The one of Oliver is during the mass start for his category, the Freshman group. The podium photo has Hunter Brown in 2nd place for the Sophomore category.
Race Report

This last weekend was the 3rd race in the 4 race high school MTB series and was held at Eagle Bike Park near Boise. We had reduced numbers due to potato harvest and LDS General Conference and only 5 of our 15 riders made the trip. Even with reduced numbers we felt like we had a large presence seeing as how we ended up with 3 out of 5 kids on the podium at the end of the day.

Triston Merrill absolutely smashed the Middle School B group. He told me that he was going to take it easy up the first big hill and then he quickly moved to the very front before he was halfway up. After that he had no problem staying in front through the rest of the course which was almost entirely singletrack from there on.

Triston's brother Dugan Merrill was our only racer in the JV category for the day. Since he missed the race in Galena he had to depend on a random draw for starting position and unfortunately got lined up near the very back. Despite the bad start he moved his way through the pack very efficiently and made quite a few tricky passes. He finished 5th overall, well enough for a podium position.

In the sophomore category we had two racers, Hunter Brown and Zain Wood. Hunter has been hungry for a podium and after a few top ten finishes at other races he finally got it. He finished 2nd for the day. Zain improved significantly compared to his previous races and moved up 9 positions from 33rd to 24th.

Oliver Hancock was our only racer in the freshman category for the day. Every racer has good days and bad days and unfortunately this was a relatively bad day for Oliver. He took a few spills out on the course including one right at the very end just before the finish. Luckily Doctor Jeff was close at hand and was able to tend to his wounds quickly and effectively. The most recent report I've heard from the Hancock camp was that Oliver was pretty scraped up but well on his way on the road to recovery.

We are looking forward to the next race on the 17th in Avimor. It is also a Sram Gold Rusch Tour stop meaning there will be a lot of cycling pros and industry higher ups hanging out, obviously including Rebecca Rusch herself, and the entire weekend should be a fun time.