mountain bike racing.
And now electric mountain
bikes have started gaining
attention, and with this a
fledgling race series. Could it
become the next big sport in
cycling? From the racers we’ve
talked to, they are fired up
about it!
THE VERY FIRST
The first race of the series
happened at the Kamikaze
Games in Mammoth Lakes,
California, in September 2017.
It was a cool event with a
BMX-style track that had a
bridge to pass over the track in
sort of a big, misshapen figure
eight.
We took a couple of laps
around the track, and at nearly
8000 feet altitude, that in and
of itself is exhausting. The
pedal assist is nearly the same
for everyone, so the playing
field is effectively level for all
riders.
Troy had an ear-to-ear grin
the whole time. The coolest
thing about this race is that
anyone can race. There is a
Pro and Amateur class, and
Troy was in a class with his
own young son, and they
had a blast! Young and old,
male and female, all mixed in
together.
The Amateur class was
whittled down from 32 to 16
for the main event. Those 16
were stacked two-deep on
the starting line, so obviously being in the front was an
advantage. There’s no starting
gate, not even a rope or rubber
start line, merely a line drawn
on the ground. The dense
traffic this causes at the start
is nerve-wracking to watch,
and surprisingly nobody gets
stuffed in the process.
The Mammoth round
marked the beginning of the
whole concept, and the organizers are still playing around
with different tracks and formats. For fun, the Pro main
was run with a Le Mans-style
start. Riders lined up their
bikes against the wall with the
systems turned off. At “go,”
they had to run to their bike,
turn it on and take off.
{ BOOGALOO }
