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International MTB Racing Returns to the USA
Two events mark the return of international mountain bike racing to the United States of America in coming weeks.
Enduro World Series
This weekend the Enduro World Series makes a stop at Northstar California Resort.
The world’s fastest enduro racers will tackle dusty, rocky, and high elevation trails over the course of two days. The first day features two stages for over 8 kilometers of total riding. The next day includes four stages for 30 kilometers of riding, though both days include chairlift transfers.
Three new sections of trail have been built for the course, including a 4-kilometer-long trail called Tell No Tales. The new sections of trail will be a part of Northstar’s trail network, and thus open to the public after their debut in the race.
The EWS has not held a race in the USA since 2017, when the series went to Aspen, Colorado. This is the first time the EWS has visited California.
Northstar has been home to elite-level mountain bike racing in the past. In 2012, the resort hosted a round of USA Cycling’s Pro Gravity Tour. More recently, it has also hosted EWS qualifier events.
Currently, Florian Nicolai and Isabeau Courdurier lead the EWS overall rankings.
World Cup
On the opposite coast, the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup will head to Snowshoe Mountain, West Virginia Sept. 7-8 for their series finale.
Both cross country and downhill racers will face tough Appalachian terrain in their last chance to improve their overall ranking.
USA downhill national champion Neko Mulally has consulted with the Snowshoe track builders for the brand new World Cup DH track.
The UCI World Cup has not held a race in the USA since 2015 when the series made a stop at Windham Mountain in New York.
Loic Bruni and Tracey Hannah lead the series rankings on the downhill side, while Jolanda Neff Nino Schurter lead the cross country rankings.
Future Racing in the USA
Despite 2019 being an exciting return to international mountain bike racing in the USA, the EWS and World Cup will not be coming back to the country in 2020.
In the case of the World Cup, the 2019 and 2020 schedules were released at the same time. My guess is that Snowshoe and the UCI are both using the 2019 race to gauge whether or not to come back to the venue in future years.
I think the same is true for the Northstar EWS. It just makes more sense for race promoters to commit to these big series for one year at a time.
It’s certainly a good thing for the sport of mountain biking to have these events coming to the USA. American fans get to see the action up close. Riders get to experience new venues. And the cycling fans around the world will have their eyes on the action.
If everything goes well, hopefully Snowshoe and Northstar will continue to invest in mountain bike racing. A strong reception from fans and good feedback from racers could influence the EWS and UCI to continue to come back to the USA. Seeing these races succeed could even inspire other promoters to hold international races in the future.
Nick DiNapoli Makes European Debut
All week, Nick DiNapoli answers emails and throws together component orders from the Praxis Works warehouse in Santa Cruz. On the weekends, he can be found in places like Les Orres, France or Val di Fassa, Italy competing in the Enduro World Series.
This Summer, DiNapoli—who has had success at local races throughout California for years—made his European debut. While making a trip to Europe is a rite of passage for bike racers of all disciplines, most find the racing incredibly difficult. This was the case for DiNapoli, but he acknowledged how racing the hardest enduro tracks in the world offered a crash course in racing at the highest level.
DiNapoli flows through a high alpine track in France. Photo courtesy of Seb Schieck.
Riding and racing motocross from a young age, DiNapoli didn’t spend much time on a mountain bike until 2012 when he joined the local high school mountain bike team. “I knew nothing about mountain bike racing,” he said, but cross country mountain biking spurred an interest in downhill and then enduro racing.
Traversing California’s highway system became a regular occurrence as DiNapoli moved his way up the amateur ranks and into the pro category in the California Enduro Series. Last year, DiNapoli took his racing international, competing at the infamous Whistler round of the EWS, which also happened to be his first time racing the premier enduro series.
Throughout recent years, DiNapoli had been involved with Specialized Bicycles as a sort of unofficial ambassador. This past winter, he got in touch with the Specialized Racing enduro team. They came to the agreement that so long as he could get to Europe, he would essentially receive the same support as the full-time team members for the Italian and French EWS rounds.
Europe has a famed history of mountain bike racing, in part because of its tracks that are different than the race courses in the United States. High-speed grass corners lead to slippery rock gardens and tricky 180-degree switchbacks. No trail? No problem. If it looks like it can be ridden, European track builders have probably sent mountain bike racers down it.
DiNapoli says the tracks in Europe were a stark contrast to those back home. “Everything has a lot in common here [in California], and Europe was like nothing in common.”
The “Euro Style” switchbacks 10 minutes into stage 2 in France particularly stood out to him. “You’re physically pretty fried by then, and then you have to work on like 10 switchbacks in a row. Some were like, ‘my bike doesn’t even fit through this,’ you know. That’s where you’re trying to master the grabbing the front brake, popping the back end around.”
The Enduro World Series will take a racer all the way from alpine fields down to forested creek sides. Photo courtesy of Seb Schieck.
Another difficult aspect of the racing was just how physically tiring the tracks were. “You’re not tired necessarily from pedalling, you’re tired from standing up and just riding gnarly downhill for long periods of time,” DiNapoli said.
Making matters more difficult, DiNapoli was coming off of a recent injury. After a 10th place finish at the Sea Otter Classic enduro race, he crashed and broke his arm while riding his local trails in the Santa Cruz Mountains. While the injury didn’t necessarily hold him back, DiNapoli certainly missed out on additional training and race days leading into the EWS rounds.
The European racing experience quickly taught DiNapoli how to adjust his racing techniques. Leading up to the Whistler EWS, he says he will pay more attention to line choice and reading the trail in different ways than before.
After Whistler, he will get a chance to race on familiar terrain when the EWS comes to Northstar California Resort. While the course is not announced until the week of the race, DiNapoli has raced at Northstar before. “I have been up there enough over the years to kind of know what to expect and know the trails,” he says.
DiNapoli doesn’t have a long term plan cemented in place. Rather, he’ll make decisions as they come. Being a privateer is tough. Racers have to balance their personal sport ambitions with the pressures of work and school. “I would love, depending on opportunity, to keep at it as long as I can,” DiNapoli says. “But it just depends on what comes out of it.”