Team USA Earns Four More Gold Medals At The Pan-American MTB Championships
Lopez De San Ramon, Konecny, Munro and Amos win XCO Pan-Am jerseys
Saturday’s race action at the MTB Pan-American Championships featured the UCI junior and U23 categories. Four events were raced, and four more gold medals were added to Team USA’s haul. We had a little bit of everything on Saturday: nail-biting finishes, rain-shortened races, and constantly changing conditions.
The XCO track at Soldier Hollow is split into two distinct loops. The start-side loop consists of moderate climbing and a flowy descent that becomes treacherous at the hint of rain. If you see photos of riders with mud-stained kits, they touched the ground on the trail heading back to the arena and the tech zone.
The tech zone is set up parallel to the finish line. Once through it, the second loop and the real climbing starts. Riders climb an Alpine-esque mountainside up to a set of rock features at the track's highest point. From there it’s a windy descent to the basin followed by one more climb and the Instagram-friendly Soldier Hollow drop. After that, it’s a half-kilometer of dead-flat, arrow-straight singletrack before hitting the tarmac and finishing on a slight climb.
Women’s Junior Race
If you’ve followed North American racing this season, it’s easy to assume that coming into the women’s junior event, Vida Lopez De San Roman (Bear National Team) looked like your race favorite. The exciting part of Pan-Ams for me is that there are great riders out there who aren’t on my radar. Riders like Florencia Monsalvez Rojo (Chile).
In retrospect, I should know the name. She’s won the last three Pan American titles in XCO and is a seven-time Chilean national champ. There’s a continent full of race fans south of us who rightfully assume Rojo is your race favorite.
Rojo and Lopez De San Roman were at the front with Alice Hoskins (Gravity Collective MTB) and Rafaelle Carrier (Pivot Cycles OTE). That group stayed together for the first two laps of the five-lap race. On lap three, Rojo and Lopez De San Roman started to pull away.
The course's highest point is around 6000 feet above sea level, making altitude acclimation a key to success at Soldier Hollow. Rojo had a visible advantage over Lopez De San Roman when it came to the climbing. Rojo would open a five to seven-second gap on the climb to the rock feature. Although this gap seemed to worry the spectators in earshot of where I was watching, Lopez De San Roman seemed unconcerned. And rightfully so. She erased the deficit with superior descending skills as soon as the track pointed down.
This pattern of going-up skills versus going-down skills continued for the rest of the race. On the final lap, Lopez De San Roman tactically led into the big climb to keep the inevitable gap as close as possible. Rojo didn’t wait long before making the pass and pushing hard to the top. And like clockwork, Lopez De San Roman shut it down on the descent, gluing herself to Rojo’s rear wheel.
Lopez De San Roman stayed patient in the final push to the finish, waiting until the pair hit the tarmac to come around to start her sprint. Lopez De San Roman held her position to the line to take the win and the Pan-American Championship. Hoskins outlasted Carrier to take third.
Men’s Junior Race
In the men’s junior race, Nico Konecny (Bear National Team) was joined by Henrique Bravo Ribeiro (Specialized Racing Brazil) and Félix-Antoine Leclair (Équipe Siboire QuiRoule) at the front of the race. On lap two, Leclair dropped off the pace as the other two continued, with Konecny doing most of the pace-setting.
On lap three, our up-to-now sunny day on the mountainside went to complete hell as a rogue storm rolled through, pelting the course with heavy rain. Konecny welcomed the chaos and continued his high pace despite the quickly forming heavy mud and slick conditions. The elastic broke on lap four as Konecny’s relentless pace was finally too much for Bravo.
From a competitive standpoint, it was good that Konecny built a minute lead going into lap five of a race scheduled for six laps. Our rogue storm brought with it lightning strikes, and the race organizers made the difficult but correct call to end the race after five laps. Konecny rolled across the line in a downpour to earn the victory. Bravo held on for second, with Leclair coming in third.
Women’s U23 Race
The women’s U23 championship race was really two races in one. There was Madigan Munro’s race and everyone else’s race. Munro (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) rode away from the field within minutes of the start and did not look back. This dominating performance doesn’t leave me with much to report. Munro did an excellent job racing her bike and won by nearly two and a half minutes.
Behind Munro, Ella MacPhee (Pivot Cycles OTE) took over second place on lap two and held a two-minute gap over the rest of the field all the way to the podium. Bailey Cioppa (Bear National Team) rounded out the podium in third.
Men’s U23 Race
If you’ve followed the coverage at the Bulletin, you know how important every point is for the U.S. men’s mission to get two start spots in the Paris Olympics. The three riders whose points count towards Olympic spots are Christopher Blevins (Specialized Factory Racing), Riley Amos (Trek Factory Racing-Pirelli) and Bjorn Riley (Trek Future Racing). As things stand, Team USA is currently seventh in the Olympic Qualification rankings. If they fall below eighth, only one athlete will represent the nation.
The quest for two spots at the Olympics puts Americans who are not Amos or Blevins in an awkward spot.1 All U.S. earned UCI points at this point are not created equally. Only Blevins’ and Amos’ points at the Pan American Championships count towards Olympic nation rankings. That means if you’re anyone else, you are faced with a decision: if I have the opportunity to win, and I’m at the front with Blevins or Amos, do I go for it?
Early in the men’s U23 race, Amos, Owen Clark (Armada Hockley Valley Resort), Alex Junior Malacarne (Trinity Racing MTB), and Brayden Johnson (Santa Cruz Rockshox) established a lead group. By lap two, Clark had dropped off the pace, and we had a group of three: two Americans and one Brazilian. A Brazilian with whom Amos is all too familiar. Malacarne finished third at the Araxá World Cup, is ranked 26th in the world and is also the Pan-American defending champ.
Amos, currently ranked 11th in the world, shared pulls with Johnson to try and rid themselves of Malacarne. The American duo accomplished their goal on lap four as Malacarne found himself in no man’s land between the leading pair and a fast-charging chase group.
When the chase group caught sight of Malacarne and the big bronze-medal-looking target on his back, they picked up the pace, putting in a lap that was ten seconds faster than the two leaders. This accomplished two things: first, the chase group of Clark, Carson Beard (Team Durango Segment 28), Zorak Paillé (Pivot Cycles OTE), and Ivan Sippy (Team Durango Segment 28) caught Malacarne, and second, alarm bells started going off around the venue that this group would also soon catch the two leaders.
That second thing never happened. After taking a mid-race break, Amos and Johnson were back at it on the closing two laps. And this is where that tension we talked about before came into play. What is “the right thing to do” for Johnson? Concede the win to Amos for the greater good, or go for Pan-American gold?
From what it looked like outside of the tape, these guys were racing, and it was fun to watch. Returning from a significant knee injury, Johnson seems to be going fast again, and that’s great to see. Amos, who never backs down from a challenge, relished the fight and went all in on the final lap.
In the end, Amos separated from Johnson on the final lap to take the win and secure valuable points for the Olympic chase. Beard, who played catch-up all race long, bested the chase group to take third.
Full Pan-American Championship results are here.
Women’s Junior XCO
Men’s Junior XCO
Women’s U23 XCO
Men’s U23 XCO
The same tension doesn’t exist in the women’s field because the U.S. women are more than guaranteed to receive two spots at the Olympics, which will go to Haley Batten and Savilia Blunk. The U.S. is currently fourth in the world with a 3000-point buffer to eighth place.