Turquoise Domination - Enduro World Series, Round 5 - Winter Park
It's the marketing dream scenario, to launch a bike then watch it dominate a world-level race. That is precisely what Yeti are going through right now, as things stand they couldn't have scripted this weekend any better. Launched just a week ago the SB5C, and Graves' prototype SB6C, is holding onto first and second in the men's competition and fifth in the women's on its international debut. Fairytale stuff indeed, because what better proof that your new bikes are as good as you say they are than that kind of performance amongst a field of other excellent bikes?
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 Pro women get quick run down of the stages before heading out on the long climb to practice stages four and five. |
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| Justin Leov and Chris Ball have a quick chat before starting off on the morning practice transfer. |
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| Richie Rude started the day in first place, so the big question was: How was he going to deal with the pressure of leading the race? |
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| CG. The only Frenchman who is this welcome in the USA. |
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| The rotor rock. This rock on stage three has claimed countless rotors and if you stood down track from it, you could hear who had made contact as they came by. |
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| It's not just a big weekend for the Yeti men, Rosara Joseph is currently holding onto fifth, her best ever EWS placing. |
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| Damien Oton has fought his way back up to 12th this evening, making up time on the more natural stages today. |
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| Third this evening for Wildhaber as he marches on relentlessly. While many of his European rivals have fallen behind this weekend, he shows how complete a rider he is by still running at the front. |
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| Today was always going to favour Richie Rude's teammate more than him, and a crash on stage five lost him precious seconds. He is still second this evening and the final stage tomorrow is the Trestle DH, one where he can attack the trail in the way he likes most, so the race isn't over yet. I think the clear answer is that he's handling the pressure just fine. |
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| Stages four and five were effectively one stage cut in two, which is why the fourth stage was just 1.30 for the fast guys; If you saw the transfer between the two stages, you would understand why nobody wanted to try and sprint up it as it was long, steep and unrideably rocky in places. |
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| Mitch Ropelato isn't just handy on the bike park stages, he did lose one spot today, but still holds a very impressive fourth place. Not a bad EWS debut by anybody's measure. |
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| Tracy Moseley took back another position today, demolishing everyone on the first stage. Unfortunately she couldn't keep that up on the fourth and fifth and while she claimed second place, by the end of the day she had slipped back to 18 seconds behind Chausson. |
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| Despite being terribly sick last night Anneke Beerten held on today to finish fifth on all three of today's stages. |
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| Lets all wish we have CG's energy when we grow up. Cedric sits in eight overall and was all laughs as he hurtled down Space Ape in afternoon practice, despite the brutally long day on the bike. |
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| Yoann Barelli sprinting the flat start of stage four. Barelli currently sits in tenth in the overall. He finished seventh on stage three and eleventh on stage four but was back in thirty-first on stage five. |
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| Joe Barnes had a solid day here in Winter park. He took second on stage five, and two top ten finishes on the other more natural terrain stages. |
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| Anne Caroline was still hungry and riding strong today despite the rarified air. ACC took the win on stages four and five. |
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| Jared Graves took firm control of the reins today in Winter Park with a clean sweep of all three of today's stages. Will he and team mate Richie Rude be slugging it out for the overall tomorrow? |
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Always interested to see Cedric's bike choice as he switches between the Nomad and Tallboy LT (can't wait to see what the next generation Tallboy will be), and presumably the Specialized and Trek riders as they have legit 650b and 29er choices, although CG seems to be the one guy alternating depending on course.
Yeti tests their bikes on Colorado trails. Listen to the Graves all the clips of Graves being interviewed on Dirt TV or on Vital, he clearly has ridden these trails quite a bit. He also defends the bike park format, saying something to the extent that these types of formats are not that favorable for the Euros, but now they have to come ride what "We are used to." Home field advantage, as I am using it here, has no reference to baseball or a cheering crowd. In mountain biking it is used to reference the fact that the trails are well known by the teams that train and test in the area. The riders are better able to setup their bikes, and pace themselves on the course.
Now, I acknowledge that Rude mentioned that he is not as experienced with the area. I has assumed (incorrectly) that since he was on the Yeti team, that was a factor. He is clearly just plain smashing it.
Do admins actually delete comments or something? Why can't I find mine? Weird.
Many of the riders were complaining of some stages being more like an XC run, Graves prepared for this in the preseason knowing it would be the case somewhere which is where the advantage comes from in my opinion. He put the miles/kilometers into his legs competing in XCO to ensure he has the endurance to cope with any type of stage that popped up in EWS. I think he would have done well on any course of this nature whether it is Winter Park or not.
He has also taken it easy to avoid mechanicals and these have been much reduced to this point when compared to last year.
One note to those genius marketers with the excellent timing. Don't ever use the word "infinity" in a new technology, ever, please.
Interesting to see Rude on the 5c, when he commented that he would rather be on a bigger suspension bike. Apparently Graves got the only proto. Can't wait to see the official launch of the bigger bike. The longer travel looks a lot more appealing to me.
Jared is from Australia, Richie is from Connecticut (and has never been to Winter Park before), Rosara is from New Zealand so not sure how your argument holds water in any way.
Lots of riders have been here before, and many if the EWS riders arrived a week in advance to ride the mountain so I'd say the playing field is more than level for everyone ;-)