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NMBS heads to Fontana
The National Mountain Bike Series heads to dusty Southridge Park in Fontana, California, this weekend for its third round of 2007. The Fontana NMBS runs from Friday through Sunday and features the full collection of series events: Super D, short-track, cross-country, downhill and mountain cross.
Southridge Park has a long history in off-road racing, and each winter hosts a popular winter mountain-bike series. In 2006, the park made its debut as a NMBS stop, and the event gave the continent’s premier off-road series a new foothold in the lucrative Southern California market. The NMBS lost its marquee stop at Snow Summit after the ski area forbade downhill mountain-bike racing in 2004.
This year, the Fontana race falls the weekend after the newest NMBS event — the April 28-29 Santa Ynez Valley Mountain Bike Festival near Buelton, California. Some 1200 racers made it to Santa Ynez, and with two SoCal events on back-to-back weekends, NMBS organizers are expecting big crowds at Fontana.
Photographers will undoubtedly remember the 2006 Fontana NMBS for the cross-country’s finish-line photo. Winners Canadian Geoff Kabush (Maxxis) and American Shonny Vanlandingham (Luna) crossed the finish line side by side after the professional men had to chew through the entire women’s field on the final 7.5-mile lap. The mishap aroused complaints from both fields, and afterward organizers promised to run the cross-country events individually for 2007.
This year, Kabush and Vanlandingham’s Luna teammate Georgia Gould come to Fontana as the favorites to win the cross-country. Both are undefeated in 2006 NMBS cross-country races, and both won the April 15 Sea Otter Classic.
Challenging Kabush will be Americans Todd Wells (GT), winner of the April 29 Greenbrier Challenge, and Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Subaru-Gary Fisher), the 2006 NMBS cross-country victor. Gould’s primary competition should come from Luna teammates Vanlandingham and Katerina Nash.
The Fontana NMBS serves as the first gravity race of 2007 — the April 1 NMBS in Fountain Hills, Arizona, and the Santa Ynez NMBS were cross-country-only events. Southridge’s winter series attracts Southern California’s best gravity racers to its bumpy slopes, including Rich Houseman (Yeti-Fox) and Eric Carter (GT-Mongoose). This year, many heavy hitters will be missing, as the Fontana NMBS is on the same weekend as the gravity World Cup opener in Vigo, Spain.
Still, Houseman, Australians Jared Rando and Amiel Cavalier (Giant) and American Cody Warren (C-Dub Racing) should challenge for the win in both gated racing and downhill.
Stay tuned to VeloNews.com for updates from the 2007 Fontana NMBS.
2007 National Mountain Bike Series
May 4-6, Fontana, California
Schedule
Friday, May 4
5:30 p.m. Super D
Saturday, May 5
11 a.m.: women’s cross-country
2 p.m.: men’s cross-country
6:30 p.m.: mountain-cross finals
Sunday, May 6
12:15 p.m.: women’s downhill finals
1 p.m.: men’s downhill finals
3:15 p.m.: men’s short track
4 p.m.: women’s short track
