Toronto Bike Show Preview

Flyin’ Brian Lopes is coming to Canada.
The organizers of the Toyota Indoor BMX and Mountaincross Championships have announced that Brian Lopes, considered to be one of the top mountaincross racers in the world, will race in this year’s 4x event at the Toronto Bike Show March 4-6.
The GT sponsored rider will be promoting his new book, Mastering Mountain Bike Skills, which he coauthored with journalist Lee McCormack. The book came out last month, and Lopes will be doing book signings throughout the weekend.More than 30,000 spectators are expected to attend this year’s Toronto Bike Show, being held at the National Trade Centre at Exhibition place.
Part of the attraction for Lopes may be the record $7,000 purse for the pro division at this year’s 4x racing, which is the largest ever held in connection with the Bike Show.


The racing is being organized this year by Toronto BMX and MTB pro Brent Smith. Toyota picked up the title sponsorship, which has allowed the pro MTB and BMX classes to have cash payouts back to eighth place, while the amateur classes will receive medals and merchandise.
Friday’s schedule will include practice sessions throughout the day and then a Dash for Cash at night that will have the BMX pros racing against the MTB pros. Saturday will have qualifiers and finals for all four divisions (pro/am BMX and pro/am MTB) followed by a Hogtown Dash with the top two riders from all classes. Sunday will be a whole new day of racing with qualifiers and finals again in all four divisions.

The course itself will be built inside the National Trade Centre’s Hall A using massive amounts of dirt. It will feature a raised starting gate, two tight berms, rollers, table top jumps and step-up jump. This year’s finish line will be located almost directly in front of the temporary bleachers set up for spectators.

To see a course map and the weekend schedule, visit http://www.motoparkracing.com/bicycleshow.htm.
For more information, contact Brent Smith at [email protected].
But Lopes won’t be the only celebrity at the Toronto Bike Show this year. Also on hand this year will be mountain bike pioneer Gary Fisher, as well as Norco trials expert Ryan Leech and unicyclist Kris Holmes.
The show includes the Metro Jam BMX competition, the TOque Unicycle Games, a bicycle film festival, riding demos, giveaways, a test ride area, free bike parking and more. For more information on the show, visit http://www.telsec.net/bicycleshow/html_pages/springshow.html