RACING NEWS |
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Morewood Bikes continue with winning ways at the US OpenUS Open 2006
 The US Open, no doubt the biggest and badest downhill mountain biking event in the country with registrations closing out at 500 riders. If you didn't book early, you didn't race as some unfortunate riders who had traveled 2000 miles found out. Held at the Mountain Creek Diablo Freeride Mountain Bike Park in New Jersey, this superb venue has now hosted this annual event for the 4th time and what a great job they did. Despite the intermittent rain during the practice sessions the course held up to the massed riders and was challenging without being stupid dangerous (ala The Yardsale at Vermont) and tested all aspects of the riders' skills. Rock gardens to die for, swooping berms, flat-out speed freak sections, twitchy switchbacks and unexpected twists that put you on your back in a heartbeat if you get your line wrong. Organizing an event of these proportions takes a huge amount of resources and Sean Orecchio and his team did an amazing job. The Diablo Freeride Park is the perfect venue for this type of event as not only do you get to race the one of the best DH courses in the country, but there are dozens of other trails available for recreational riding. The lift works well for mountain biking as it requires no labor intensive bike handling; you simply load and unload your bike yourself and with 3 riders with their bikes per car, even the long waiting lines move very swiftly. Many of the riders were finishing the DH runs and then going back up the mountain to have fun on the other trails. You could get about 20 runs a day if you have the energy. With over $35,000 of prize money and swag, this is the richest race in the USA and the chance of walking away with $5000 for a pro win lured the best riders from all over the world. Morewood Bikes USA had their team rig there supporting 4 pro riders on their Factory Team - Joanna Pettersen and Lisa Myklak for the pro women and Geritt Beytagh and Jonty Neethling for the pro men. Morewood Bikes seemed to dominate the series with dozens of other riders on their newly acquired Morewood DH rigs and a number of SponsorHouse.com riders sporting their Morewood colors. The qualifying process was fairly rigorous with only 100 riders out 350 going into the final in the amateur class and 60 out of 150 in the pro class. The Factory Team all qualified well and the scene was set for an exciting final. The pro women raced first and Joanna n finished 4th even after recovering from a crash in the infamous rock garden and Lisa swept through with a faultless run to win the $5000 first prize. The pro men were next with Jonty coming in a very creditable 28th and Geritt screaming down to hold the Hot Seat for all but the 2 final riders. Jared Rando finished just 200th of a second ahead of Geritt and John Kirkcaldie from New Zealand put on an amazing spurt in the last 200 yards to win 1st prize. It was a hugely successful event for The Morewood Factory Team with 3 riders in the top 4 and on the money winning podium. No other bike company were able to emulate the Morewood success with 3 of their Izimu DH bikes in the top 4 positions. |
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