Finally, after months of waiting, riding, and training, the first BC Cup is here. Race The Ranch, while not the most technically difficult, is often called one of the hardest of the year because of how short and how physical the course is. With the top times being under two minutes, any mistake, big or small could cost you being off the podium.

This was also a special race because it was Cory’s 20th anniversary of racing BC Cups. 20 years ago, he raced his first BC Cup in this very same place, with the same race organizer still doing his job to this day. Cory decided it would be a good opportunity to race!

Day 1: Practice/Seeding

Usually, this parking lot is dry and dusty. This year, rain kept the dust down and made the course run way faster than years before.

The weather played out well for most of the riders this weekend. The course wasn’t developing the huge dusty holes that it did in the past during practice because the overnight showers kept the dirt holding together nicely.

As a gift to himself, Cory built up a new race bike and used input from the other riders to set it up as best as he could in the short day of practice before the race.

Although it was a super short course, riders had to be careful not to do too many practice runs because of the nature of the course. A few of the riders opted to use trail bike because of the flat sections that required lots of pumping and power to the pedals. With not many lines, there wasn’t much talk about where to go, it was pretty much the same for everybody. Ride as fast and pedal as hard as you can.

Flying high over the triple. In years past, this step up gave some riders trouble because it was hard to make the landing, but with the course in such good condition, riders were hitting it with ease.

The weather played out nicely for practice day with only slight sprinkling in the afternoon, but otherwise really good riding conditions! Not too hot like everybody is used to in Kamloops around this time.

With near perfect dirt condition, the corners were amazing and riders were able to carry much more speed than previous years.

Seeding runs for the Jr. Ex and Pros kicked off in the late afternoon and riders were surprised with their times compared to previous years. All the training in the off season is showing!

Day 2: Practice and Race

Final preparations being made to the bikes before practice starts. It was slightly chilly in the pits, but once on course things started to warm up for the riders.

There were always people stopped to watch this jump on the course to see exactly where the best place was to land to get the most speed for the following pedal/pumping section.

The weather took a turn during the Sr. Men race and it started to rain hard for about half an hour. Riders who came down told stories of extremely slippery conditions and recommendations of different a tire setup. Luckily the rain didn’t last too long and the Jr. Ex and pros came down with the dirt being tacky instead of slippery clay.

Alex Auger took the win in Jr. Sport and Daniel Froese took 3rd!

Cory also came down in the rain, and even with a crash dislocating his finger, he took the win by over 5 seconds! C4 Riders weren’t about to let that go unnoticed…

Soaked in champagne, and smiles all around, it was a good day to race for our coach.

Stephanie Denroche in second, just .37 off the win

Two C4 Riders on the Jr. Ex podium! Blake Bunting in 3rd and Michele Bianchi in 5th.

Jack Almond making a return and taking 5th in Pro Men!

C4 Results: 

Cory Leclerc 1st Masters 40-49 Men 

Alex Auger 1st Jr. Sport Men

Stephanie Denroche 2nd Jr. Women

Blake Bunting 3rd Jr. Expert Men

Daniel Froese 3rd Jr Sport men

Adam Woodhouse 4th Sr. Men

Michele Bianchi 5th Jr. Expert Men

Jack Almond 5th Pro Men

Levi Harapnuik 6th Pro Men

Caleb Harapnuik 9th Jr. Expert Men

Jacob Stefiuk 10th Jr. Expert Men

Adrian Lee 10th Jr. Sport Men

Willam Zwiers 14th Jr. Expert Men

Joe Witwicki 20th U17 Sport Men

The next ra

Two weeks seemed to go by pretty quickly! Already we’re back in Port Angeles. This being the biggest race of the season, we wanted to make sure to get there early so we could save our spot. After setting up the tent, we went up to do a track walk. It was pretty busy and we weren’t able to shuttle so that meant walking up then down the course, which wasn’t too bad. There weren’t really that many lines to chose from, you just had to ride fast. There were a few little awkward gaps though, so I wanted to get those out of the way as early as I could on Friday practice so I could focus on speed for the rest of Friday then Saturday.

Friday practice went well, I did all the gaps earlier on in the day so I could focus on the rest of the track. There were a couple gaps that deteriorated so I wasn’t able to hit them, but that didn’t really bother me, I knew I could hit them with the right speed.

At the end of the day, I was having a lot of problems with my rear mech. Up until recently, I hadn’t had any of the problems that everybody else had with the B-Tension tab breaking, but I found that I had to tighten the allen key that went into the hanger up every run. This eventually lead to the hanger threads being ripped out. Good thing we had an extra hanger, and we ended up having to modify an 11 Speed derailleur for it to work.

Being a pro GRT, only the top 60 would qualify. I was feeling pretty confident that I could, but then it started raining. After that, I was a bit worried about crashing, but then I remembered that a lot of the guys I was racing against were from California and they had no idea what to do when things got slippery. That gave me more confidence knowing that I had been riding in the rain all winter. Qualifying went well, and I ended up in 46th, well inside the top 60. I had a very cautious run because I knew if I crashed, I would be out.

The rain did not continue so I thought the course would be pretty perfect with only the roots being a little slippery. I did two practice runs in the morning and was pretty excited about finals. Last year there were huge crowds in a certain section and I was hoping that they’d be there so I could get cheered on. They were there alright, and it was a pretty cool experience! My race run was solid and I pulled back quite a lot of time from my qualifying run but still ended up 46th in the end.

It was a good weekend and I learned a lot. I am getting a lot more confident in my race runs so I just need to up my overall speed, which I think is the easy part!

Wow, already its the first race of the season! It’s time to test the fitness and all the hard work in the gym, which flew by so quickly.

Port Angeles has always been a favorite. The people, the hill, the organizers, everything creates an awesome race environment. This year was no different.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon/evening after getting our adventure pass to be able to park on the hill and set up our trailer and tent then did a track walk. The track was a mix between the Cat 2 course last year and the Pro/Cat 1 course from the Pro GRT last year plus some new sections. It didn’t look like it was going to be a very hard race because there weren’t any real technical sections, but I still thought it was going to be fun.

Friday practice was good and the track was holding together nicely with it only being a little bit slippery. I was feeling smooth on the new bike and the lines came pretty easily. It was super humid on Friday and even though it wasn’t hot at all, we were all sweating like crazy inside the Uhaul trucks on the way back up the hill.

Saturday practice went the same, but the track was getting a little more beat up. I knew I had seeding in the evening, so I was trying to figure out a strategy for that. About 5 minutes before my seeding run it started raining pretty heavily. I knew that the first corner into the first woods would be slippery, but other than that I thought it would be fine. I apparently forgot about the last berm that was slippery and ended up sliding out right before the finish line. It happened so fast I didn’t even know what was happening.

It rained a little bit overnight but I knew the course would still be really good. I got in 3 practice runs in the morning and ended up running up to the shuttle to make my race run, but I was still feeling well nutritionally so I wasn’t worried about taking that one extra practice lap. My run went pretty smoothly with only a few mistakes. I ended up 10 seconds back from first.

I’m happy to put together a good race run, I’ve struggled with that in the past, but I’m happy I’m making improvements on race runs. I know I’m fast in practice but I’ve always seemed to be on the brakes and make mistakes in my race run. I hope next race will be even better!

After not seeing any of the C4 guys since the last race of the season, it was good to get some shuttling laps at Cypress in together! The rain Cooperated and stopped pouring as soon as everybody got to the base of the mountain. We all got wet, but it was still awesome!

Afterwards we all headed home to clean up, and then to play some lazertag. Next time we did this, we agreed that it would be paintball instead of lazertag. Paintball is less violent. To finish up, we all headed to the Sampson’s house for pizza and to present Cory with a signed photo of the team from last year. Cory is a strong, tough man, so of course, there were no tears that were desperately being held back…

More to come about C4!