Qualifying In Madrid Leaves Bearclaw In The Top Spot

At the end of a hot day in Spain, Darren Berrecloth qualified as the number one rider for the first day of the Qashqai Urban Challenge. Adam Hauck wins the Qashqai best trick. This week’s event is the Street course, challenging riders to throw down on concrete ledges, gaps, and technical lines.
During practice on day one, invited riders like Adam Hauck, Jeff Lenosky and Wayne Goss were looking strong. The tour riders were also adapting quickly to the new urban environment. Practice started early to avoid the hot sun, and the riders were able to take a traditional Spanish “siesta“ in the afternoon before the first round of qualifying.
Qualifying started out with strong runs from the tour riders and invited riders alike. 360s were the trick of choice for most of the short drops, and the specialist riders were raising the bar with technical tricks and new moves that haven’t been seen so far at the Qashqai series.


Adam Hauck was the top qualifier out of the specialist riders, coming through with a run packed with no-foot cans, tailwhips out of wallrides, tuck-no handers and a huge superman seatgrab on the last jump.
Hauck qualified third, just behind Paul Basagoitia, the series points leader. Paul was throwing big tricks on every jump of the course, like a 360-table off the first step-down and a stretched out superman on the short box jump after the wallride. Paul pedaled hard at the second-to-last obstacle, a step-on/step-off box, and flipped onto it! All he needed to do to secure his second place position was land his tailwhip on the last box, which he did with ease.

The first round of qualifying looked extremely stacked when Bearclaw rolled onto the course. All the riders except Berrecloth went for the step-down line on the first jump, but The Claw took an alternate line, landing two tricks in a row (no-foot can, tuck no-hander) into stair landings.
Bearclaw continued his run with a 360 off the next drop, followed by an superman indian air over the box jump and downside footplant on the wallride. He opted out tricking the next drop in order to get speed for a gap from the wallride. He hit it with good speed and was able to land into a stair set much farther down the course!
He capped his run with an opposite 360-one foot up the step-up and no-foot can on the step-down, finishing it up with a perfect one-handed 360-table.

After the qualifying results were finalized, the Qashqai Best Trick contestants were announced. The five riders to join the best trick contest were Darren Berrecloth, Adam Hauck, Darren Pokoj, Lluis Lacondeguy and Lance McDermott.

Riders would have 40 seconds to put together a quick run on the box jump and wallride. The judges assembled near the box jump and the riders mentally prepared their runs. Darren Pokoj was the first rider to start the session and he did so with some amazing technical riding. He did multiple tricks with great variation, like a barspin tailtap on one wall, to a barspin disaster on the next.
Lluis Lacondeguy was the next rider to join the contest, and he came through strong with three back-to-back box jump tricks. All tricks were executed perfectly (360, backflip, tuck no-hander).Lluis landed his tricks perfectly and ended his run. Lance McDermott was the next rider, and he proceeded to unleash his bag of tricks on the box jump. The top trick during the 40 seconds was a barspin to the top of the box jump, then quickly bunnyhop 360-ing into the landing on the other side.


Adam Hauck climbed up to the best trick start ramp next, ready to annihilate the competition. His qualifying run was filled with multiple technical tricks, all worthy of best-trick status. Hauck started his run with a no-foot can over the box, into a wallride to tailwhip! This trick alone was the best trick winner in Nuremburg for last year’s District Ride, but Adam kept dropping tricks. He approached the box jump after stomping the tailwhip and manualed the top to sprocket-270 back into the ramp. Adam finalized his best trick assault by pedal stalling the top of the wallride.

Darren Berrecloth was the last rider of the Qashqai Best Trick contest and he used his 40 seconds to nail a trick of the highest difficulty. He wanted to stick a smith stall to 270 on the top of the wallride. This would require him to put his front axle OVER the top of the wallride, then somehow spin backwards 270 degrees and land perfectly in the transition. After three attempts, Berrecloth stuck the trick to the sound of an extremely excited crowd. As he rode towards the rest of the riders, it was easy to see how excited he was to land such a difficult trick.

The judges awarded the best trick win, 1500 euros and a big bottle of champagne to Adam Hauck for his extremely consistant and awe-inspiring 40 second run. The amount of difficult tricks that Hauck was able to pack into a 40 second run was enough to win at least three or four best trick contests!

Tomorrow is the second round of qualifying and the finals for the Madrid stop of the Qashqai Urban Challenge. Riders will have another chance to make the top twelve in order to advance to the finals. The weather for tomorrow afternoon has a chance of rain, and the riders know this, so the second qualifying run will be extremely action-packed, as it could also count as the final round for Madrid.

Visit the Qashqai Urban Challenge website (www.nissan-qashqaichallenge.com) with information about each city, the events, rider bios about the invited tour riders, results and rankings. Videos of the action can also been viewed on Freecaster.tv from the Newcastle and Milan stops of the Qashqai Urban Challenge. To check out the action directly, go to: http://play.freecaster.com/1000006/1002048