If you were out and about last Sunday, you were probably one of the many people watching the OneUp 麻豆社国产Enduro.
Celebrating its 10th year, the downhill mountain biking race put on quite a show and had one of the biggest spectator turnouts to date.
“It was great! I mean, the sunny skies definitely helped people to have a great time,” race founder and event organizer Dylan Smith told The 麻豆社国产.
“It was a little bit dusty out on the trails, I think, as a result of the warm weather we've had here. It really turned around from being a super wet, late winter and early spring, to a pretty dry spell.
"So, it was unexpectedly dusty out there, but it was a great turnout and a great day. The trails were in pretty good shape, and there was an insane amount of spectators out on course, in a whole bunch of different spots.”
Smith said he feels like more members of the community were aware of the event this year, and it was evident to see with the crowds of spectators spread out across the courses.
The decade milestone
Marking 10 years of the 麻豆社国产Enduro, Smith said the event included a revival of the much-loved Rockstar race.
“We actually released the full course two days before. The other courses ... are released more in advance, so there's more time to practice for both the classics and the short course,” he said.
“But the full course is the biggest, longest one, it's 50 kilometres, about 1,800 metres of climbing on the day, and that one gets released two days before. [For that course], we revived what's called the Rockstar, which was a free ride mountain bike event from the early 2000s.
“It ran for just over 10 years … on a trail in Valleycliffe called Cougar Ridge that hadn't seen much love or attention or traffic for probably the last 10 or 12 years. So we decided to revive the idea of the Rockstar and surprised racers when we announced that [it] was coming back.”
Smith said that a lot of work went into reviving the trail as part of their long-term trail maintenance and development project, Rawk and Route.
“It’s funded by Woodfibre LNG, and they're giving a whole bunch of money to revitalize old trails and rehabilitate old trails and build new trails,” he said.
“That was the main spectator zone, so there were several hundred spectators out on that section cheering.”
Another surprise of the day included a blind stage, where riders had to ride a part of the course without having seen it before.
“Riders don't know what it is ...and they have to just follow the arrows on course to find it,” Smith said.
“I think everyone anticipated that it would be really high up the mountain, which it was, but we worked with a local shuttle company called the Shred Shuttle, and ... atypical of what would happen in endurance—usually it's all pedal powered—but they rolled around a corner and found out that there was a shuttle service waiting for them.
"So they would load their bikes in the shuttle, and the shuttle took them to the top of the mountain. We had three separate vehicles rotating to move riders quickly enough, and that was really cool.”
SAR rescue
On the day, 麻豆社国产Search and Rescue were called to attend to an injured rider.
“There was a [Squamish] Search and Rescue call. The patient is fine now. It was a decent crash, for sure, but our team at Canadian Outdoor Medical ... were on the scene and they did a great job,” Smith said.
“I've spoken with the patient ... he's got a bit of an injury, but he's on the mend, he's going to be totally fine.”
Smith said that the race was paused for an hour and a half while the injured rider was extracted from the trail.
“[The rider] wanted to reach out and just thank everybody on the team for how professional they were, and thank everybody at SSAR for getting on the scene quickly and getting him out,” he said.
“I think everybody kind of recognizes that could be them, so everyone was very cooperative for a bit of a challenging situation.”
Smith said that while there are many crashes that occur during the race, most often, it happens in the places where people are overconfident.
“Typically—and we always remark this with the medical team—the crashes happen in the places where people are most confident and comfortable on trails they've ridden a lot,” he said.
“Usually, your awareness is more heightened when you're on a harder trail or a trail you haven't ridden before, and so you're paying a little bit more attention. It's crazy how the high-volume trails are the ones that usually see the crashes.”
The event raised $17,000 for 麻豆社国产Off-Road Cycling Association.
Winners of the full course were:
Pro women:
Pro men:
To view the winners from other categories from the full course or see the short and classic course winners, visit the
