Chain Reaction Cycles.com/Intense - Sea Otter Classic

The 2010 season has kicked off or 'Erupted' with the Sea Otter Classic over at Laguna Seca Raceway in Northern California. The event is more of a festival for teams to debut their new new race gear, bikes and sponsors with most of the USA bike industry showing off the latest products and of course tons of spectators and and amateur racers competing and getting to watch the Pros that they only normally see on-line or in the magazines. The DH race is not much of a DH as their is more pedalling than actual DH and not too many corners either but the Slalom race is really cool and always great close racing. All the team qualified through to the finals (only Chris, Claire and Matti were at Sea Otter) in the Dual Slalom after riding their new Intense Tazer VPP Slalom bikes for the first time in the practice session. In the mens field there was over 100 pro riders with only the top 32 making it through to the finals. Chris ended up making a mistake against eventual 3rd place finisher Jared Rando and lost out by a few 10ths in the round of 16. Matti was edged out by Dan Atherton in the round of 32 and Claire lost out to Tracey Mosley in the Womens race. GTs Mick Hannah was the eventual winning just beating Yetis Aaron Gwin by hundredths in a very close fought final and Jill Kintner took the win over Rachel Atherton in the womens final. In the DH or sprint race, Claire ended up 10th in the very tough womens field, Matti was 19th in the Mens and Chris 10th in the mens after slipping his pedals just before the big jumps section of the track and loosing some serious time and momentum. He was only 2 seconds off the podium which was a real shame. He was by far the highest placed finisher on flat pedals. Congratulations to Yetis Gared Graves who won the DH on his 4X bike showing that he can out sprint everyone at the moment. Also to Melissa Buhl who took the win in the Womens. Our bikes and new race kit looked fantastic, easily the best on on the circuit in my opinion but I guess I am a little biased. But a big thanks to everyone who got all this done for us in time. I have attached a few pictures from the slalom courtesy of Intense's top new employee Craig 'Stikman' Glaspell. Look out for more of Stik's pictures and some video footage from Jeff Steber on our team website www.crcintense.com in the near future. Also look out on www.VitalMTB.com for some great pictures of the team riders. Check out this great picture of Chris courtesy of our good mate Fraser Britton: www.pinkbike.com We are now stranded in California with the current flight situation so we are going to take advantage of the good weather here to get n some DH and XC training. I will post some pictures and reports on the team site. Thanks to Intense for setting up and having pits for us at Sea Otter. Check out the rattle snake!! We woke up to this morning with it just outside the patio! Yikes....... Nigel Page
Team Manager - ChainReactionCycles/Intense
www.CRCintense.com