Tired but undaunted after 500 kilometres of high-quality mountain biking, about 450 riders gritted it out last Friday (July 4) on Whistler's beautiful and challenging trails to cap the second annual BC Bike Race. After seven days of intense riding starting in Victoria, Sunshine Coast native Kris Sneddon and Kona teammate Barry Wicks came out on top after building a substantial lead through the last three stages. "It's awesome. We kind of just came to the race to have fun and see what could happen. So to win it is pretty sweet," Wicks said. He said Team Kona won by sticking to a safe game plan over the lengthy event.
"The most important thing for us the last few days was riding consistently and not blowing up, not making mistakes and breaking our bikes and stuff like that," Wicks said. "We just kind of rode our own race and kept it safe and had fun."
Last year's champions, Chris Eatough and Jeff Schalk of Trek VW Mountain Bike Team, were the runners-up this time around, after fighting back from a serious deficit courtesy of a mechanical issue in stage one. Australian duo, Flight Centre's Tim Bennett and Adrian Jackson, rode their momentum from a stage two victory to finish third overall, despite a rough day in Whistler that included two punctures and a crash.
The Kona pair of Sneddon and Wicks came across the Whistler-stage finish line behind the team of Beijing 2008 Olympian Seamus McGrath and Chris Sheppard and the pairing of Andreas Hestler and Max Plaxton. Both highly regarded duos were impeded by mechanical problems and punctures early in the race, but fought back for some impressively speedy finishes in the later stages.
In the women's category, Americans Sara Bresnick-Zocchi and Kelli Emmett of Taint Slo grabbed the lead in stage one and never looked back.
Wendy Simms and Normon Thibault, competing as Team Kona - riding in memory of Denis Fontaine, dominated the co-ed category all week, as did brothers Brian and Bruce Johnson in Veterans 100. After leading all week, the Canadian team of Andrew Handford and Pat Doyle was toppled in the veterans 80 category when Americans Dave Harrison and Matt Luhn surpassed them during the Whistler stage.
Wicks said the Whistler stage was both the hardest and the most fun, as Team Kona could sit back and enjoy the ride with their victory essentially secured.
"[Stage seven] was definitely the most difficult trail riding, as far as technical goes - probably the most fun, too. Some of the earlier stages were a lot of fire road and the closer we got to Whistler, the more trails we got, so it was pretty awesome. Today was a lot of fun," Wicks said. "There was some pretty hard climbing, but they made up for it with some really sweet trails."
