Race Report: Outlier Offroad Enduro - Vail, Colorado

On a pleasant fall weekend in the mountain hamlet of Vail, Colorado, a perfect storm of bikes and racers converged to hotlap some of Vail's finest trails. They arrived to contest four long stages stages in the 4th annual Outlier Offroad Festival's Rockshox Enduro. The course featured a mix of flow/pump trail, gnarly rock gardens and high speed singletrack. The weather wasn't just pleasant; it was pretty much perfect. Cool nights paired with unbeatable Colorado bluebird and 4 courses literally drowning in golden aspen leaves. These are the days that made you want to ride your bike until the gondola closed, savoring each and every lap. On top of the classic fall riding on tap for the enduro, the 3-day Outlier Offroad Festival also served as host to one of the largest mountain bike demos in Colorado, which meant there was plenty of time for sampling some of the newest and most rad enduro sleds available.



With the bike demo including brands such as Scott, Yeti, Mondraker, Cannondale, YT, Commencal, Trek and Spot there was no shortage of bikes to ride and compare. The demo and main venue were adjacent to the Vail Village Gondola that took riders directly to trails dropping over 2,000 feet right back down to the venue, which was the cherry on top for anyone wanting to try out a new bike.




For the featured RockShox Enduro, practice started on Friday with the four long stages being split up over Saturday and Sunday. To keep everyone on their toes, Sunday's stage 3 was raced as a blind stage on newly cut trail through dark stands of spruce, finishing on a lung busting wide open descent through glorious golden stands of aspen. On the line was a $2500 dollar purse being split equally between the pro men and women.


Dropping first on the day, in what would be a string of firsts, was Austin Hackett-Klaube from Boulder, CO. It was Austin's third time competing at the Outlier Offroad, and it would prove to be a real charm as he took overall victory by sweeping each stage of the race. Of course, being a downhill racer, stage four's Magic Forest/Onza Alley combo was his favorite. "It was a good mix of physical descending with rough technical sections. You ramped up to a full on sprint and then spooled back again. It was interesting and really fun," said Austin.






In the women's pro class, the racing would be much tighter with the lead changing on both days. BMC's Antonia Wurth set the bar with her close wins on the first two stages.


On Sunday, the tables would turn for Antonia with Emma Dunn rising to the occasion to claw back scamp seconds by winning stages three and four to take the overall by just 13 seconds after 47 minutes of timed racing.


In her first race back from knee surgery earlier this year, Yeti's Sarah Rawley put together some consistent riding to land herself on the podium in third place.







With more great weather on tap for Sunday, starting the day with nearly 360-degree views at sunrise in the heart of the Colorado Rocky Mountains was pretty amazing.


Of particular note, the Rudeboys (and girls) rallied for the weekend with their politeAF good times, and also put a teammate on most of the race podiums. Adam Prosise rode consistently to take second in the pro men's race, and Jamie Landry rounded out fifth place on the pro women's podium. In addition to the cash purse, CushCore donated a pair of inserts to the winners of the junior mens's and women's fields.



Another notable was semi-local Matt Thompson who knows a thing or two about the trails on Vail Mountain as he's had a big hand in the construction of many of the newer trails. At 47 years young Matt opted to race in his 40+ age category, which he won, but held the torch for the old dudes by clocking an overall time that would landed him a third place in the pro men's race.







It's no secret that Jared Graves is a cherished part of Colorado racing, and with Jared in many of our thoughts, it was great to see Austen rocking the Strength For Jared mohawk!


Full race results here.