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.”