A week after striking gold at the Pan American Games, mountain biker Adam Craig of Corinth and Bend, Ore., scored a more personally satisfying victory Saturday when he won his first pro men’s cross country title during the 2007 USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships held at the Mount Snow Resort in West Dover, Vt.

While the 25-year-old Craig was the lone American in the Pan American Games cross country race he won at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 21, Saturday’s victory came against all the top Americans, including those he is competing against for berths on the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team.

Craig won his first U.S. cross country crown with a time of 2 hours, 16 minutes and 31 seconds for the 20-mile race. Jeremiah Bishop of Harrisonburg, Va., was a distant second, 4:26 behind Craig, followed by Michael Broderick of Chilmark, Mass. (6:35 back), Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski of Boulder, Colo. (8:52) and Todd Wells of Durango, Colo. (9:12) among the 45 finishers.

Horgan-Kobelski and Wells represented the United States in the 2004 Summer Olympics.

“This and World Cup podiums are even,” Craig, also the top-ranked American on the International Cycling Union’s World Cup circuit, told USA Cycling. “It’s good to finally win, and this is the best place I could think of to race bikes and win a championship.”

The Exeter native and Dexter Regional High School graduate, who first rose to regional and national mountain biking prominence as a teenager competing in youth-level races at Mount Snow had come close in this event before. He finished second in 2004 and third in 2005 before settling for a fifth-place finish last summer, when the event was held at Mammoth Mountain in California.

With the national championships not only coming to the East for the first time in his professional career this year, but to a highly technical course he considers a second biking home, Craig was determined to take charge of the race from the outset.

The Giant Bicycles rider built a 1-minute, 40-second lead over the second-place Bishop after the first of four five-mile laps, and steadily increased that margin as the race continued. Craig led by 3 minutes at the midpoint of the race, and by 3:45 entering the final lap.

“Starting fast has always backfired on me,” Craig said. “I started sort of slow, got a gap and the gap got bigger. I just enjoyed myself and rode my own pace. I figured if I didn’t crash or do anything stupid, I’d be all right.”

Craig added to his medal cache on Sunday morning, winning the men’s super D (downhill) national championship for the fourth consecutive year.

Craig bested second-place Mike West of Boulder, Colo., by pulling away from West on one of the course’s many uphill sections.

The two trailed Chris Herndon at the outset of the race, but sped past Herndon on one of the early climbs. Craig eventually pulled away from West on another ascent and finished the race in 7 minutes, 57.21 seconds. West was next in 8:11.44.

Craig capped off his weekend with a second-place finish in Sunday evening’s short-track cross country race. Ryan Trebon of Corvallis, Ore., the 2006 pro men’s cross country champion, won the event in 23 minutes, 12 seconds ahead of Craig.