15 DEVO U14 and U19 athletes headed to Crested Butte for their 3rd team race of the season. Once a month, coaches and athletes travel to a big Colorado event and camp or stay in a condo together, this race had the team staying on the mountain, in a classic 80’s ski condo. Coaches Chad and Annie Cheeney, Jess Reed, Sarah Tescher and Evan Elliott stayed with the kids and raced their bikes on the side.
Friday saw 2 prerides go up the mountain. The 7 mile loop was basically a singletrack and mountain road climb followed by a bumpy fresh descent that rattled riders through the aspens and columbines. Most of the team enjoyed the course and the semi rain storms kept the dust down. The mosquitos were big and hungry, so the rides went a little faster than recommended by the coaches. That night the team attempted to play a round robin doubles tennis tournament, only to be thrown off the court due to the game looking more like a mix between paintball and dodgeball with rackets. Coach Annie and Sarah prepared a spaghetti dinner and the team talked over the next days plans before hitting the hay.
At 8am coaches Sarah Jess and Annie took off for the 40 mile cross country race that was new to this years schedule. The new course took the Pro’s and Cat 1 racers on a super epic loop on all of the finest singletrack around Crested Butte. The rest of the cross country racers did loops on the 7 mile course. Cat 1 juniors doing 3, cat 2’s doing 2 and the junior under 14 doing one lap. Sarah and Jess would go on to take 1st and 2nd place in the singlespeed womens division, Sarah finishing with a time in just under 5 hours. Annie was unable to finish after putting in 6 hours in the saddle.
The Cat 1 boys took off on 3 laps of the course at 9am. U19ers Howard Grotts, Sepp Kuss and Gino Pastore took the holeshot up the mountain and broke away from the gun with Park City young gun, Keegan Swenson. Howard was able to put a gap on Keegan on the 2nd lap climb and held him off to take his first cross country win of the season. Sepp rode in to 3rd place and Gino followed in 4th. 5th place finished 18 minutes behind Gino in the 10 man field.
U19er Kaylee Blevins rode strong and won the Cat 2 15-18 girls race and showed she’s ready to defend her national championship title in Sol Vista this July. The Cat 2 Boys has 2 mechanicals early with Haakon Sigerslid flatting on the first descent and Hank Stowers breaking his chain in the first 5 minutes of the race, he fixed it with help from his coach and finished the race in 13th place. Stephan Davoust and Collin Francom battled it out for 4th place all race and Stephan took the top team spot on a fast last descent down the mountain. Collin took 5th and James Shaham rode in to 12th place.
The Under 14 Boys took off at 2:15 pm after a long day of waiting around to race. It was one of the largest junior fields of the season and all the Colorado Junior teams were well represented. Early on it was Keenan Desplanques and Devin Feilen leading the charge for the team. Everybody rode strong and looked to be having a great time coming down the mountain into the finish. Keenan ended up 7th and Devin was 10th. Teammates Charlie Malone was 13th, 15th was Cole Mystrom, 17th George McQuinn and Chase Seivert in 18th.
Several parents took the break from their kids and preparred a race day for themselves. Mike McQuinn, Dave Sigerslid, Dana Shinn and Jeff Seivert all rode strong and smiled around the track. A bummer of a highlight was Dad Jeff rolling to the line looking at first place, and an unknown racers sprinted up and pimped him at the line, leaving him in 2nd. He laughed it off in style. That night the team rolled into town together and took in the Crested Butte cycling scene. Then watched the pro mountain cross finals, then had a team dinner of lasanga, and then had the infamous schwag fest before bed time. After the long day of action you would think the athletes would bed down easily. Not the case.
The next morning saw the athletes rise early to get in a couple lift assisted practice runs on the Super Downhill and Downhill Tracks. The race runs were at 10am and the team had 1 hour to go over their tracks. First off the line was Coach Chad Cheeney. He took the LeMans start quickly and went onto the singletrack first, holding off the field to win the race. Soon after it was U19 Gino Pastore tallying up another victory in the junior mens category and a little later, U19er Kaylee Blevins followed those up with another! Stephan Davoust took 4th, Hank Stowers 6th, James Shahan 10th, Keenan Desplaques 12th, Chase Seivert 16th and Charlie Malone 19th. Sepp Kuss took 30th in the downhill and George McQuinn tried his first ever downhill race and placed 28th. Whew. Tons of Fun!
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