Written by James Sladeck

The good news was that they had 10 and under categories for cross country, downhill and trials. The bad news was they were all in one day!!!!!

Troy and I started practicing Thursday afternoon and evening. The DH course was very ungroomed, rutted and had tons of rocks. It was not very steep and only had a few fast sections. Since we had not done much downhilling it took a while to warm up but once he got a good feel for the course, he started ripping pretty well. On race day he tore it up with a perfect run--2 mins 32 seconds which got him first place by 1 full minute and was better than a lot of the beginner men and some expert women.

We had pre-ridden the entire XC course--10 miles of steep sandy climbs, rutted steep downhill sections and all kinds of weird crossings through cement drainage ditches etc. He did it all and felt pretty good. We were expecting 1.5 laps but for some reason, they only required the junior riders (14 and under) to do .5 laps. Troy finished first with one good crash that knocked his chain into his spokes and bent his derailleur hanger. Luckily he was able to keep going on for the win. He placed better than most 12 year olds and even some 14 year olds.

Trials were very interesting. We didn't have time to check out all of the sections and Troy did well (no other kids) but really fought it on his bikes. His little pit bike was way too small and his mountain bike way to big for all of the rocks, loose dirt and tight turns. Freeride Pioneer Ritchie Schley stopped to watch Troy on 1 section and was pretty impressed.

-James