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Thanks Beech Mt. NC!!!(National Champs) Pics and Video

FCLinder

FCLinder

Turbo Monkey
Mar 6, 2002
4,402
0
Greenville, South Carolina
Great time this weekend even though it was a mud fest. Have to say a big thanks again to Beech Mt, Chris H, and Crew for making this weekend happen in the South!!!! The mud made it very hard on most, but everyone had to race in the same conditions.

Highs this weekend:
  • The crowd to support DS and DH was insane!!! I think I got stage fright racing DS as I made way to many mistakes. Been a long time, but had enough fun as an old guy can!!!
  • In DH, the crowd was crazy in the upper rocks. I hit most of my lines even though I felt like I was pulling a skier down the Mt by a rope. Boy was it hard to pedal in the mud this weekend. #1 hardest mud race I have raced on the East Coast in my 13 years of racing.
  • #1 high was seeing my son Mason (4 years old) riding down half of the DS course 2 nights in a row!!!!!!! (Will put up video soon)

Lows this weekend:
  • Well the Rain, but still great times!!!!!

Thanks goes out to:
  • All the Sponsors that support Team RM East!!!!
  • Sram for fixing both my brakes and Fork.
  • Aron Gwin, for being such a cool guy to my son.
  • Once again Thanks to all the made this weekend happen!!!!!

I have lots of Helmet Cam Footage and Pictures I will put up here soon. Didn't have the time this weekend because I was cleaning Mud from my teeth from smiling so much. If you were at the race this weekend taking pictures or videoing, place them here, not only for the racers to view, but to support Beech Mt NC for stepping up in the South to make things happen. The more they see from us, the most likely the may open a Bike Park on the Mt next year..... The South East needs this!!!!

For now some pictures here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Team-RM-East/198574363492842


Pictures taken by: Jay Schultz

Thanks,
Cecil:thumb:
 
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waterdogs

waterdogs

Monkey
Jul 30, 2010
817
0
Upstate SC
The link Cecil put up will have some team pics and I will put other pics up either on PB or FB and post a link here. Questions, let me know.

Thanks!

Jay
 
jackalope

jackalope

Mental acuity - 1%
Jan 9, 2004
7,610
5,926
in a single wide, cooking meth...
^^

That pretty much sums it up. Agree with everything Cecil said - the venue, crowd, course(s), fireworks (legal and otherwise), band, parking lot rally car races, USAC staff (<-- yeah, I said it), etc...were all outstanding. I'm still having a hard time believing Beech just hosted the Nats, and knocked it out of the park IMO. I suspect next year will be even better, especially if it doesn't rain cats and dogs the night before the races. I honestly have not had that much fun in a long time at a DH race, and will try to make all 4 days next year.

Huge props to Moto, Herndon, Talia, and all the good High Country folks who made this happen. Well done all.
 
brado1

brado1

Monkey
Jan 2, 2008
248
0
G'Vegas SC
Photos From Saturday's Qualifiers and Dual Slalom camera died before the Pro DS had to split early, so missed Sunday.

there's several hundred pics loading onto Flickr (will post up a link as soon as they're all loaded)

some quick favorites



Set 1 of Saturdays Practice Run and Qual Runs is loaded on Flickr Gravity National Championship set1 - a set on Flickr

two more sets to load up sometime today/tomorrow



as w/ most of the shots i take they are Crap, Crap, crap , crap, Diamond , crap , crap..... get lucgky a few times...plz no emails or pm ask heying "Hey can you check if you shot 169?" what you see is what you get... if you can't find it i didn't get ya;


2nd Set Posted over night....mostly dual slalom Gravity Nats - Saturday Set2 - a set on Flickr

 
chillindrdude

chillindrdude

Turbo Monkey
Jan 18, 2002
1,852
23
Northern VA, a peckerwood with too many guns
i agree on all accounts.

the venue was excellent, seems like beech mtn was super supportive. lift loading with the bike trays was a cinch. the lift operators were all friendly and very helpful.

usac pre-reg as very smooth, and i was in-out in about 5 minutes. practice time was ample. course design was top notch, lotsa ninja lines to make you think. appropriately wide for folks to pull off at tricky sections, i rarely encountered slow/stopped traffic during my practice runs.

anyone with pics of cat2 thurs practice and friday race?
 
SuspectDevice

SuspectDevice

Turbo Monkey
Aug 23, 2002
4,169
373
Roanoke, VA
Southerners-
With average fuel and labor costs at most mountains it costs about 20 riders a day to cover the expense of running the lift.
It appears that Beech has 3 races and a few "ride days" planned for next year. I mentioned to my friends from Florida that they should approach the mountain about opening the hill w/sufficient group pre-sales. They already fill busses for Snowshoe trips and there are lots of Floridians who already own condos on the mountain. It's a huge winter market for Beech and Sugar... The rest of the southeast can do the same thing- help to open the hill by popular demand.

The management seemed really stoked on the weekend but they were disappointed by low rider numbers. Sitting down and explaining the difficulty the timing presented helped a lot. Lots of people made sure to bombard them with positive feedback an advice, but more, as much as we can muster is even better. I made sure I spent time explaining the sport to ski patronizes and grandmothers. Dang did it get them stoked and more excited to better undertand the event and the drama.
Bike parks and chicken and egg scenarios. To get people to buy bikes and book lodging they need to be confident they'll be able to ride them somewhere.

Having a park that is open full time much closer to the
major southeastern population centers would be a huge boost to our sport. Drop them emails and thanks it WILL make a difference.
 
0110-M-P

0110-M-P

Monkey
Jun 1, 2009
244
2
Atlanta, GA
I don't have any pictures of riding, but did manage to use my phone to snap a picture of my bike. This is after my first practice run on friday morning...the bike was clean and shiny before this run.

 
gemini2k

gemini2k

Turbo Monkey
Jul 31, 2005
3,526
117
San Francisco
SuspectDevice said:
Having a park that is open full time much closer to the
major southeastern population centers would be a huge boost to our sport. Drop them emails and thanks it WILL make a difference.
Click to expand...
I get the vibe that the southern DH scene is getting pretty big, no? I would think that you guys would have no problem getting 30+ people a day there. Isn't it close to several population centers? Charlotte, Knoxville, and Atlanta are all fairly close it looks like.
 
Big J

Big J

Monkey
Jul 18, 2005
421
0
Chicago
+1 to everything Cecil said!

Just about every staff member I interacted with wanted to know if I was having good time and what I thought of the course including a woman who was handing out beer samples!!……Also, most business owners I bumped into on the Mt and in Banner Elk were stocked the event was in town! The genuine hospitality blew me away, many thanks to the Beech Mt staff!

Great time! We’ll be back next year!

J
 
motomike

motomike

Turbo Monkey
Jan 19, 2005
4,584
0
North Carolina
sstalder5 said:
What was his tactic? I almost don't want you to tell me so I can hear his explanation of how carrying your bike upside down is actually faster :rofl:
Click to expand...
He stuck his front wheel into a rock and flipped OTB in the rocks, so he just grabbed his bike and ran the rest of the way out of it to a smooth spot. Loudest cheers of the day :thumb:
 
waterdogs

waterdogs

Monkey
Jul 30, 2010
817
0
Upstate SC
Here's one of my favs. I've have like 2000 photos to go through, so I will piece meal them while I can... also need to get caught back up with like in general mixed in there as well.

The one Cecil put in the first post is also one of my favs.

 
SuspectDevice

SuspectDevice

Turbo Monkey
Aug 23, 2002
4,169
373
Roanoke, VA
Via tethered internet connection in a Greyhound bus somewhere in West Virginia:

I didn't take many pictures with my yuppie phone- but I sure like these:

On a normal Friday at 9am I'm usually in bed, asleep and guilty, trying to drag myself out of bed and onto the bike to ride to work.

I got to spend last Friday heckling on the Am DH track. Y'all can have your rocks and roots and dust and drops- I sat in this off camber sweeper for 20 minutes and saw three people stay up through it. Grass. Rules

I ran across the bottom of the DH track to scope the DS track.
I'm proud to say I helped to put up the signage on the finish arch for the DS race. Chessy. I know.
I got teary, I'm not going to lie.

If you've never been privy to the behind the scenes workings of a big event let me lay it down;

Confusion.
You have promoter, a course builder, a timing company, a logistics company and officials and volunteers that all need to coordinate and communicate. It's really hard.

The current ownership at Beech has hosted about 5 races.

The logistics company(they put up the iron, wrangle the PA and handle technical issues) is from the road scene They'd never been to a gravity event and had only done 2 xc races before.
I've worked with them at a few criteriums that I'd volunteered at and they were super stoked to hear about how rad the racing was going to be. I gave them the run-down on DS. They didn't have a clue how it worked when they showed up. As in they had never even heard of it. Not suprising really...
By the end of Friday they were bouncing with DS stoke.

They walked the DH track with me on Sunday so we could talk about where to add wireless repeater PA speakers for next year and to get an idea of how fast the riders go, the flavor of the racing and a big ole eye-opener when they saw just how crazy things can get in a major spectator areas like the big rockgarden. Dudes were jumping up and down screaming and pounding on tape. That's what we need more of- and surprise, it came from getting people excited about our sport from the outside. Are we lazy?

I asked them to add a 3rd speaker up the track during the DS race so we could hear higher up the course. They would've added a 4th speaker but they couldn't find enough cable. To be be clear- these dudes hiked a quarter mile with speakers on their backs so the spectators had a better experience. There is nothing to say about that except awesome.

None of these people got paid any extra to do any of this stuff. Remember that next time you complain at a race.


The timing company usually does... I can't remember, but it was something like midget horse races... They aren't from bikes, but I didn't hear about a single re-run due to timing issues.
The officials were well, USAC and UCI officals. Except for two or three of them they were all new to MTB racing. The officials manual has about 2 sentences covering DH, maybe stolen from the Norba definition. Even though they had no backgroud, I didn't hear of a single confrontation, they were polite when they didn't know the answers and they seemed to work seamlessly with the timing company. Results up in time for the 15 minute protest period, unheard of these days.

The point-person from the mountain seemed to have boundless energy. If you've ever done bussiness with me you know what a shi+show it is, and it didn't phase her.
The pit space was cheaper than any event in recent memory. We killed the battery in our car and a car full of rastafarian mountain employess(with a pretty scared 15 year old showed up, jumped the car and we did some donuts and ran down some cones while they gave me a ride to Freds so I could give buy them a 6-pack tip.
They lent me a table and chairs, and the rad people at CaneCreek lent me an EZ-up. Management accepted packages for me, delivered them to my tent without asking- and let's not forget the FREE BEER AFTER THE DH RACE. Yes, if you stopped by the beer tent by the finish-line you could take all of the beer you could fit into your slobbering fists. Yes. Free. Beer.

There isn't enough to be said about how good the tracks were. They were designed for tight, fast, challenging bike racing and they delivered just that. My hand may be just broken enough that I can't ride, but I didn't need to ride any of the three superb tracks to know that honestly, the couldn't be any better.
Think about that for a second.

The biggest heroes of every major event are volunteers. At the fancy-schmancy CX and road races I'm involved with volunteers get paid $25-$50 for the day. At races like Mt. Snow they get ski tickets. At Beech they got thank you's from people that were polite enough to remember they were doing it for free. At any major DH race you go to the volunteers have no idea what's going on, I promise you. Many of them are Ski Patrol. They are on the mountain more than almost anyone all year and one or two positive impressions makes a huge impression Stop, talk to them, thank them, ask them if they have any questions, ask them if they're interested in knowing more about the sport. Bestow them with beer and cookies.

Be evangelical. It works. They are the linchpins in the whole scenario.

All of that leads to this-

This is the crowd on the blue side of the DS track during the Jr. Expert DS race.
There were TONS of septegenarians in track suits, cousins, little kids, frat-boys, jailbait, former racers and old-school-burnt out DS adherents that disappeared in the late 90's when slalom was phased out of the local race series. Next time, turn to your left, turn to your right, and ask them if they understand what's happening. Be evangelical. It works.

People who actually race were in the minority.
When was the last time that happened at your local races?

Thanks WNC. Thanks so much.
 
RajunCajunNC

RajunCajunNC

Chimp
Feb 25, 2009
18
0
A, A

Friday was mixed Cat 1/Pro practice. And that's the 2015 TLD pajamas, I had them specially made for me. :D And thanks for putting up those sweet pics Jason.
 
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bizutch

bizutch

Delicate CUSTOM flower
Dec 11, 2001
15,928
24
Over your shoulder whispering
SuspectDevice said:
...
....
Click to expand...
That white pointy tent in the background had about 200+ "spectators that would come up the hill too, add to our numbers...then stagger back down for refills.

That guy dead center in the middle of your pic in the baby blue tee is one handsome fella too.:thumb:

This race had everything. Heck, we even had the World's Most Interesting Man in the beer festival tent. I can't be the only one who saw him.:think:
 
DHracer1067

DHracer1067

Turbo Monkey
Sep 16, 2003
1,189
0
somewhere really ****ty
RajunCajunNC said:

Friday was mixed Cat 1/Pro practice. And that's the 2015 TLD pajamas, I had them specially made for me. :D And thanks for putting up those sweet pics Jason.
Click to expand...
I think the full res image should be there also to download. Not sure if I ran out of space on the DH pictures.

Anyways here are some slalom pictures from Saturday. Not the best towards the end cause I managed to get wayy drunker than intended. I still have a couple hundred left to upload and a bunch to delete cause they are pictures of the ground or the sky or something but have fun sorting through.


https://picasaweb.google.com/102565163783476804659/BeechMountainNationalsDualSlalom?authuser=0&feat=directlink
 
Jeremy R

Jeremy R

<b>x</b>
Nov 15, 2001
9,698
1,053
behind you with a snap pop
My ribs are too sore to type much, but wow what an incredible weekend.
I am thankful for everyone who made it possible.
Riding with bruised ribs on that track in the mud took everything I had, and somehow I miraculously made it on the podium.
Having Nationals so close to home and having all the family and friends there really made it great.
The biggest regret I have is not racing the slalom. Being hurt, I tried to save myself for the DH, but watching the slalom was just incredible. Highlight of the weekend!
The best thing for me though was to see my 3 year daughter really loving to see the women race slalom. She was screaming and ringing the cowbell at them, and then had to have her picture taken with Kintner.
Great times and I can not wait until next year.

This pic sums up my weekend:



 
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jackalope

jackalope

Mental acuity - 1%
Jan 9, 2004
7,610
5,926
in a single wide, cooking meth...
^^
Note to self - get injured prior or during big race event.

Both you and Andy D were banged up for your race runs and both of you landed on the podium. The pain and discomfort must help you guys concentrate (or it hurts so bad you're in a big hurry to get it over with) :thumb:

Seriously, well done to both you guys, and you've got one beautiful little girl there!

Hopefully mine will get a pic with Jill next year :flirt:

Now I have to figure out a way to hurt myself in a non-catastrophic way before Paris Mtn.
 
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