April 19, 2009
Monterey, CA

Sunny skies and a warm weekend greeted racers for the annual Sea Otter Classic held this weekend. Having just flown in from the first world cup in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, many of the downhillers waited for bikes to arrive and adjusted to jet lag to prepare for the physical pedaling downhill course, and the fun dual slalom. Finish positions reversed for Greg Minnaar and Mick Hannah as Mick took the win in the downhill and Greg followed for second showing how fit these two are heading into this season. During practice Greg was tripling the final corner jumps to gain some time, but in the end he blew some upper corners losing time and didn’t take the jump option and just lost out to Mick by .06. “I was disappointed with my race because I made some really amateur mistakes. But at the end of the day I’m really happy that I beat Lopes! It’s now 1-1 all round.”

Coming back from ankle surgery, Kirt Voreis had a solid weekend finishing 19th in the downhill and 15th in the dual slalom. Kirt bested teammate Minnaar in their first bracket together in the dual slalom, then Kirt rode impressively against Mike Haderer in the second round just losing by a narrow margin. Last years slalom winner Minnaar says of his 18th place slalom finish, “DS+BS=ES”, after his two uncharacteristic crashes.

Josh Bryceland had fun this weekend and improved on his last years Sea Otter performance showing that his training is coming along, and he finished 40th in the downhill today.

Steve Peat sat out the Otter this week as he is home on baby watch with his wife’s due date April 27th.

Next week Greg is teaching at the BetteRide Camp at Boulder City, Nevada, then we head to La Bresse, France for the second round of the UCI World Cup Series May 9-10.

Thanks to the SYNDICATE Sponsors:
Santa Cruz Bicycles
SRAM
RockShox
Truvativ
Avid
DT Swiss
WTB
Crankbrothers
Lizard Skins
Clif Bar
Troy Lee Designs
Chris King
Five Ten


DOWNHILL RESULTS:

1 HANNAH, MICK 02:08.18 AUS
*2 MINNAAR, GREG 02:08.24 SANTA CRUZ SYNDICATE
3 NEETHLING, ANDREW 02:08.89
4 LEOV, JUSTIN 02:09.06 NZL
5 LOPES, BRIAN 02:09.24 USA
6 CARTER, ERIC 02:09.38 USA
7 ATHERTON, DAN 02:09.62 GBR
8 RANDO, JARED 02:09.92 USA
9 ATKINSON, BRYN 02:10.32 AUS
10 RENNIE, NATHAN 02:10.32 AUS

*19 VOREIS, KIRT 02:12.30 SANTA CRUZ SYNDICATE
*40 BRYCELAND, JOSH 02:16.54 SANTA CRUZ SYNDICATE