Bikers tested by elements, terrain

loading...

CARRABASSETT VALLEY – Standing on a modest grassy incline, John Jones peeled back a fresh gauze wrap and the accompanying pad to reveal his hobby’s latest trophy.

The fresh oozing wound on his left elbow was the result of a small miscalculation of Jones’ speed on a downhill turn Saturday morning.

“I hit the berm and I just, like, turned my wheel off, and I slid out and I fell down,” he explained of his spill on the course’s first inclined, hairpin turn.

Continuing his narrative, Jones lifted his shirt and pulled down his bike shorts to reveal the bruises on his left hip, left over from his last accident a few weeks ago.

It was a little more information than necessary, but it was all in the spirit of sharing the zeal that drove the Glenburn 15-year-old and pals to hurtle their bodies down Sugarloaf Mountain in the Cannondale Downhill Challenge, part of the Widowmaker Challenge 95 this weekend.

Nearly 1,000 competitors from the North Atlantic states and Quebec braved intermittent showers and a 90-minute rain delay Saturday to compete in the downhill and Saab Dual Slalom at the Carrabassett Valley resort.

Due to problems with the time-keeping system, official results of the downhill and slalom events were not available Sunday night. Unofficially, Andrew Mahoney of Salem, Mass., won the men’s downhill.

Peter Webber Jr. of Carrabassett Valley won the Gary Fisher Cross Country Circuit, while Carol Waters of Peru, Mass., grabbed the women’s title.

It was a scene Jerry Garcia would have enjoyed as Hootie and the Blowfish and Cantaloupe blared from loudspeakers while competitors and fans made their way down the 2.23-mile downhill section and milled around concession and mountain biking paraphenalia stands.

And like any good Grateful Dead concert, rain failed to drive any of the faithful away.

Jones and friends Todd Ingersoll, 16, and Aaron Barnes, 15, both of Brewer, waited out the rain delay, standing to the side of the grassy, red- and blue-flagged slalom course.

“It was totally different from yesterday,” Ingersoll said of the downhill course’s condition on Friday. “Yesterday it was like dust and really, really fast.

“And now it’s wetted down, it’s total, totally different,” he said, noting he crashed five times in practice Friday. “You were sliding out in the corners and you were expecting that, but here it was sticking and you got thrown off.”

“It’s hard, you’ve really got to ride it wet to know what it’s like,” Barnes added.

Even the pro-expert riders headlining the event, such as Andrew and John Mahoney of Salem, Mass., and Webber, met with different conditions as they were greeted at the race’s start by rain and thunder.

“NICE!” shouted the group, laughing at the race’s start as thunder clapped in the background.

“That’ll get you down the hill a lot faster,” shouted someone else.

But by the time the men’s sport classes started going nearly an hour into the race, things had gotten pretty sticky. Competitors had wiped out a straw barrier two bales high down to the individual strands at the course’s second hairpin turn.

This year marked the third year the threesome entered the Widowmaker Challenge that has served to further fuel their hobby.

Like drug dealers thriving on a junkie’s need for a fix, local bike shops have helped the boys trade in their current bikes for newer, better, more expensive models each year.

“This is where my money goes,” Barnes said with a smile, pointing to his bike. “All my money for the past three years.”

Barnes trains daily with Ingersoll and Jones, and he uses a heart monitoring device to alternately pace and push himself.

“Last year I didn’t use it a lot, but this year I really turned on to it,” Barnes explained. “It helps me a lot, otherwise you don’t know where you are. In a race, you could feel really bad, but you don’t know why. Now you know why and you learn to push yourself.”

Without a driver’s license between the three of them, the boys depend on the kindness of their parents to drive them from event to event.

Next year, a driver’s license will take them farther than their current limits in Maine, to races throughout New England and into New York, they said.

That may be the only thing that has changed since they first took to their Big Wheels.

“We’re like the little kids who always crashed and burned when we were 5 years old,” Jones laughed.

Some things never change.