MOUNTAIN CREEK – DIABLO FREERIDE PARK JUNE 7, 2006: The US Open, no doubt the biggest and badest downhill mountain biking event in the country with registrations closing out at 500 riders. If you didn’t book early, you didn’t race as some unfortunate riders who had traveled 2000 miles found out.
Held at the Mountain Creek Diablo Freeride Mountain Bike Park in New Jersey, this superb venue has now hosted this annual event for the 4th time and what a great job they did. Despite the intermittent rain during the practice sessions the course held up to the massed riders and was challenging without being stupid dangerous (ala The Yardsale at Vermont) and tested all aspects of the riders’ skills. Rock gardens to die for, swooping berms, flat-out speed freak sections, twitchy switchbacks and unexpected twists that put you on your back in a heartbeat if you get your line wrong.
Organizing an event of these proportions takes a huge amount of resources and Sean Orecchio and his team did an amazing job. The Diablo Freeride Park is the perfect venue for this type of event as not only do you get to race the one of the best DH courses in the country, but there are dozens of other trails available for recreational riding. The lift works well for mountain biking as it requires no labor intensive bike handling; you simply load and unload your bike yourself and with 3 riders with their bikes per car, even the long waiting lines move very swiftly. Many of the riders were finishing the DH runs and then going back up the mountain to have fun on the other trails. You could get about 20 runs a day if you have the energy.

With over $35,000 of prize money and swag, this is the richest race in the USA and the chance of walking away with $5000 for a pro win lured the best riders from all over the world. Morewood Bikes USA had their team rig there supporting 4 pro riders on their Factory Team – Joanna Pettersen and Lisa Myklak for the pro women and Geritt Beytagh and Jonty Neethling for the pro men. Morewood Bikes seemed to dominate the series with dozens of other riders on their newly acquired Morewood DH rigs and a number of SponsorHouse.com riders sporting their Morewood colors.

The qualifying process was fairly rigorous with only 100 riders out 350 going into the final in the amateur class and 60 out of 150 in the pro class. The Factory Team all qualified well and the scene was set for an exciting final. The pro women raced first and Joanna n finished 4th even after recovering from a crash in the infamous rock garden and Lisa swept through with a faultless run to win the $5000 first prize. The pro men were next with Jonty coming in a very creditable 28th and Geritt screaming down to hold the Hot Seat for all but the 2 final riders. Jared Rando finished just 200th of a second ahead of Geritt and John Kirkcaldie from New Zealand put on an amazing spurt in the last 200 yards to win 1st prize.

It was a hugely successful event for The Morewood Factory Team with 3 riders in the top 4 and on the money winning podium. No other bike company were able to emulate the Morewood success with 3 of their Izimu DH bikes in the top 4 positions. Morewood would like to thank their sponsors for the great support – Manitou, e.thirteen. Hayes, Industry Nine, Cane Creek, Dainese, Crank Bros, Sun Ringle

Norba # 2 – Sugar Mountain North Carolina 11 June 2006: This popular ski resort based deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Boone NC hosted the 2nd NORBA NMBS event for 2006. What a change from the dry dusty conditions of the 1st NORBA held at the Fontana Southridge Park location in Southern California. Downhill riders arriving for their first practice session on Thursday 8 June were met with misting rain and a course that looked more like a muddy river bed than a national DH course.

Technically, if courses were rated 1 for easy and 9 for extreme, Sugar would be close to 9 and the wet made certain sections almost unridable. Crashes abounded and not a single rider came down from the mountain without bruises and grass stains. Pits were a hive of activity changing tires to spikes and dusting off the wet weather gear. All the talk was about the “waterfall”, a treacherous 15ft vertical drop at the top of the course that had an almost impossible approach, an intimidating set of rocks that were bound to claim a few riders. In the wet, this was only being attempted by the most skilled or plain crazy riders.
Friday dawned mostly sunny and warm and so it stayed for most of the weekend except for a sudden thunder storm that halted the pro dual slalom and sent the riders and spectators running for cover as lightning struck the nearby ski-lift.

With the course drying out rapidly it was off with the spikes and back to dry weather tires for the rest of the weekend. Pro qualifying was on the Saturday and Sam Hill gave a convincing demonstration on what was to come by qualifying 1st from fellow antipodean Justin Leov. The Morewood riders did well with Cole Bangert and Joanna Pettersen both qualifying 5th in their pro classes. Now for the bad news; 2 of our top riders were out of this race, with Lisa Mykak sidelined with a badly bruised shoulder and Geritt Beytagh sadly out of this year’s Norba with a broken shoulder blade from a fall on the Dual Slalom course.

By the afternoon, the course had dried out and had turned from a scary-dangerous course in the wet to a challenging-fun course in the dry. The Pro women came down the mountain first with young Tracey Hannah showing great form by beating Sabrina Jonnier into 1st place with Joanna coming in with a great 4th Place.
Cole was hoping for his first NORBA podium and achieved this with a faultless run to get 4th place to put him on the podium with fellow US rider Duncan Riffle. Predictably, Sam Hill absolutely blew away the competition with run that was 14 seconds faster than 2nd placed New Zealander, Justin Leov.
With Joanna’s 4th place in the women’s Dual Slalom, Morewood had three podium places for the weekend, adding to the previous six from the 1st Norba in Fontana and the US Open.

Morewood would like to thank their sponsors for their great support – Manitou, e.thirteen, Industry Nine, Cane Creek, Dainese, Crank Bros, Hayes and Sun Ringle