In the early spring of this year, I was looking for grassroots sponsorships. All the companies that were willing to do it for me, didn’t have the ideal bike setup that I wanted, so I was looking around for more options. I remembered that my dad and I had talked to someone from Calgary who was connected with GT Bikes. Their Fury DH bike, which I had read reviews on, looked liked it had everything I wanted in my dream bike, so my dad gave him a call and I sent my resume.
A couple weeks later we arranged a phone call and he said that they were going to be starting a grassroots team this year and that he wanted me to be on it. A few phone calls later and things started to come together. With a few delays, I finally got my bike and suspension A DAY before my first race in Port Angeles. With a few little troubles during building the bike (which always happen), we went off to test it on Cypress.
Long story short, the bike was different to what I’m used to and I had a pretty hard crash and decided to only take one run before packing up for the race. It took me a little while to get used to it, but everything has been going smoothly. I received the team jersey and all of the other gear at the first race that we were all doing together.
A typical race weekend starts with setting up the team’s GT tents and all of the tools, tables, and chairs. Depending on what day we get there, we need to register and get our race plates before practice can start. Practice day is tricky because you have to find a balance of taking enough runs to really know the course, but not too many to wear yourself out.
On the night before the race, there’s usually a meeting to discuss any changes or announcements about the race the next day.
On race day, I take at least two runs in the morning just to warm up and finalize what I’m going to do on my race run. Then the real work starts, I have to changing tires and making sure everything on my bike is perfect before the race to make sure that nothing goes mechanically wrong. I like to give myself at least 40 minutes to get to the top of the mountain before my race run in case something happens, then all the days of preparation comes in to one 2-5 minute race run. Crazy, huh?
My dream of one day being a sponsored rider on a team has come true a lot quicker than I had hoped!
We might not be the fastest team in the world, but we have the most fun.
