Teva Mountain Games report

Over the last few years the Dual Stunt has emerged as a recognizable freeride mountain bike contest. It is kind of a bit of a side-show in comparison to the big slope-styles or dh races but it serves a purpose. The dual stunt is a relatively easy way to bring mountain biking to the masses.

The crowd doesn’t have to come to your mountain course, rather the mountain biking can be brought to any type of event that has an open area 50 feet wide and several hundred feet long. I still like to refer to dual stunt as speed trials. The idea originated from speed trials but the truth of the matter is that it has evolved into a different creature. One where speed and technicality are rewarded but the course can be mastered with a regular mountain bike.

Don’t judge the photos too harshly – they came from Dylan’s vid camera. But they did help him tell a story.

The Teva Mountain Games was the birth place of the dual stunt and was essentially the brain child of Jeff Lenosky. In the beginning, the Teva Mountain Games had speed trials, but this sport was inaccessible to your regular freerider and as the popularity of trials in North America dwindled,  the sport of dual stunt emerged with its debut at the Teva Mountain games.

I haven’t been there since the beginning but I have participated in the Teva dual stunt for a few seasons, and I am sure any rider who has participated in the Teva dual stunt will attest to fact that it is actually one of the most fun events out there. So here is a little inside recount to 2009 Teva games and what it takes to put together a dual stunt, race it, and clean it up.

For the last couple of years I would head down to Vail, Colorado a few days before the competition and give Jeff a hand putting the course together. For me it is a good time to hang out a bit and get some insider info on the course that has yet to help my race result in any year. This year we hooked up at the Denver airport and headed up to Vail.

Every year we try to add something new to the course and arrange it in a different way. Generally we asses what’s left of the previous year’s course and then head down the road to Avon for a lumber supply run. In previous years it has resulted in overloaded rental minivans that had so much weight in them they could do wheelies…no joke. This year, however, we had a ¾ ton pick up and it was astonishing how much lumber it could carry. Once we got the lumber and supplies, we move onto the evening and course design.

Course design usually takes place in the hotel sports bar on a napkin. It sounds crude but is actually very efficient and has yet to fail us. We work with the previous year’s obstacles and our fresh load of wood to design something that will be challenging and fun. A few brews and napkins later we generally have the course laid out in our heads and it is off to sleep to get ready for a serious day of construction.

Whether or not the dual stunt is your cup of chai, the people of Vail sure came out t it.

The construction day is always a bit of a riot. This year we had a nail gun which helped us streamline the construction process of the new obstacles and shoring up the old ones that we would use. On a side note nail guns have the ability to shoot nails very far and are defiently not a child’s toy…

Once the construction is finished we move on to painting the course to make it look like the  race machine that it is. I am guaranteed to ruin at least one pair of jeans in this process and get more paint on the ground and in my hair than on the race obstacles. All that usually mops up another day and then we move onto my favourite part, the move.

In Vail they don’t mess around and when something is this organized they do it right. The move consists of about 10 city workers, a fork lift and two 18 wheelers – how awesome is that! So we direct the loading of the semi-truck like we are important organizers of some important contest and send the obstacles into town. Once there we set the obstacles in correspondence with our napkin blueprints and get ready to practice.

We get a day of practice to figure out the fastest lines through the course. This year was pretty rad because there weren’t any crazy huge euro events at the same time so we had a star studded rider line up such as Paul Bas, Cam and Tyler McCaul, Aaron Chase, Cam Zink, Adam Hauk and Jamie Goldman just to mention a few.

This year we had a great Canadian participant list as well including the likes of Geoff Gulevich, Danny Brody, Eric Lawrenuk, Mitch Chubey, Andrew Cho and more. Everyone was looking fast in the qualifiers and the times were tight. I had two marginal runs but managed to squeak into the event finals only to be destroyed by Jamie Goldman in the first bracket of 16. Lenosky got bumped in the second bracket of 8 and Chase managed to hang in there even after a collision.

The field dwindled down until the small final which pitted Chase vs. Goldman and the main final featuring Zink vs. Paul Bas. Even though the races aren’t something you are going to see filmed for New World Disorder, they were exciting and the packed street with 1,000 or so noisy fans coupled with the TV cameras and photographers on course all added to the effect.

   
So how did all the cards fall? Well, Paul took the win with Zink in second with a close finish.   Aaron graced the podium in third complete with little bundle of joy in his arms and Goldman took fourth after taking a bail in his final run that sent his bike sky high like a misguided rocket off course. The podium was behind us and the cash was given out but it was not quite over yet for Lenosky and I. We still had to tear the course down. 

Paul Bas has a habit of standing on top of podiums when he’s healthy… and the Chase legacy has begun.

With impact drivers in hand, we went to work tearing apart the obstacles and piling them in a uniform fashion to one side of the road for the city crew to pick up on Monday and take back to the works yard until next season. The winners had won the and losers had lost but everyone had a good time and was looking forward to Ebbet’s slope-style the next day.

Even though the event was over, as I tore down the course with Jeff I could still hear and feel the buzz of the Dual stunt alive and well at the Teva Games.  I would overhear individuals passing by saying that the event is one of their favourites at the games or we would get a compliment about the exciting races earlier in the day. In the end the Teva dual stunt is fun for everyone and I for one had a great time and look forward to next year.

Dylan Korba
norco.com