Team News

Team News

Santa Barbara Bike Festival

Elings Park, Santa Barbara, Cal State #6

You gotta love So Cal where we race back to back weekends from the thin air in Big Bear to pacific overlooks along the coast in Santa Barbara. While most of So Cal was socked in under June gloom, we had mostly clear skies and perfect race conditions. The short Elings course packs a hard blow with steep switch back climbs, over 50 corners, and bone crushing bumps. Team member Ross Thompson was a bit disappointed that Cat 3 would only be doing 2 laps, that was before he raced. Afterwards he was quite relieved that he only had to do 2 laps.

Another nice thing about this race is that all categories race at different times throughout the day. The support and cheering was great as we made our rounds on the relatively short circuit. I personally want to thank all our team members for sticking around and supporting Jodi, Yoshio, and me (1:30 start time).

Nice View!

Mike Dowdle crosses the finish line for 4th place

Ross Thompson finishes in 3rd place

Results:

Name:	Class:	Place:
	Cat3
Ross Thompson	Clydes 35+	3
Michael Dowdle	40-44	4

	Cat2
Jeanne Scheetz	40-49	4

	Cat1
Yoshio Garcia	19-24	1
Jodi Martin	50+	2
Mark Scheetz	Single Speed	4
David Robertson	19-24	DNF

Big Bear Shoot Out 1, Cal State #5

Round 5 of the California State Series was up in the thin air of Big Bear on an absolutely perfect day. Everyone seemed to have an exceptionally good time no matter how they placed. I have been known to complain about the Big Bear course and it’s abundance of fire roads, but this time I found myself having a blast bombing down the roads and chasing my competitors. For those of us doing the long course we did get treated to some of the best single track Big Bear has to offer. This is one of those courses where all classes seem to converge near the end. At one point on the final climb I spotted 3 purple and black team jerseys ahead. That was cool.

Several Coates Team members made the podium with 1^st place finishes by Yoshio Garcia (Cat 1), Jodi Martin (Cat 1), and Joe Karcavich (Cat 3). This was our best team effort to date with 11 members racing and the top 8 earning 395 team points.

Congratulation to all of you.

Yoshio on the big box again

Jodi celebrates a cat 1 win

Ross on the podium for a hard earned 2nd place

Team memberJoe Rancavich should be on the big box

Jeanne reunited with adapted team member Rhonda

Results:

Name:	Class:	Place:
	Cat3
Joe Karcavich	Clydes 35+	1
Ross Thompson	Clydes 35+	2
Michael Dowdle	40-44	4

	Cat2
Jeanne Scheetz	40-49	3
Moises Molina	35-39	8
Adam McCamish	35-39	9

	Cat1
Yoshio Garcia	19-24	1
Jodi Martin	50+	1
Mark Scheetz	Single Speed	3
David Robertson	19-24	4
David Martin	65+	8

Mid Season Race Review

We’ve had a lot of team members do all sorts of races over the last couple of months. In April we had a great turnout in San Diego for the return of the Sagebrush Safari. The fast course with swoopy banked corners has always been a favorite of the State Series. Unfortunately we did have one casualty. Jeff Dambrun suffered a badly broken arm. You know those two bones in your forearm; he snapped those right in half and managed to scoop up lots of crud during the fall. He made the surgeons earn their pay. Aside from that unfortunate mishap, it was another fine race day. Jodi and Dave will tell you it pays to hang around for the raffle; they won the grand prize, a cool cruiser bike (I’m still sure that it was my ticket).

Sagebrush results:

David Martin 8

Moises Molina 13

Ross Thompson 7

Joe Karcavich 8

Jodi Martin 3

Jeanne Scheetz 7

Mark Scheetz 4

The next race in the series took us up to the wine country near Los Olivos for the Santa Ynez Valley Classic. Temperatures were very nice this year. The course is mostly easy rolling single track with only one short difficult climb. Ross and I turned in the worst team results for the day. Ross flatted right at the start. It’s tough to make up lost time after that. I made the huge mistake of skipping a water feed on my second lap which caused me to cramp up and barely survive my third lap. I awarded myself the team turtle for that mistake. No matter what, it’s always a good time.

Santa Ynez Valley results:

Yoshio Garcia 2

Michael Dowdle 4

Joe Karcavich 3

Ross Thompson 10

Jodi Martin 1

Mark Scheetz 7

I’ve noticed team members showing up in the results of several other races. We had a few make the long trip up to Monterey for the Sea Otter Classic. A couple participated in the grueling Idylwild Spring Challenge. And a big congratulations to Moises Molina for taking 2^nd place in the Warrior’s Society Traverse.

Great job everyone!

Fontana City National, Kenda Cup #2, Cal State #2

We had some real mountain bike racing in the back yards of Fontana’s Southridge hood. The XC racing was split with Cat 2 and 3 racing on Saturday and Cat 1 and Pros on Sunday. I couldn’t make it on Saturday but I know you who raced had to deal with the heat on this extra challenging course. I’m sure glad we had nice weather on Sunday because the new course was a technical throwdown! The Cat1/Pro course consisted of a 1000’ of climbing for each of the 4 laps plus a super long hike-a-bike, twisted sandy descents and numerous bottlenecks throughout. Carnage was widespread at the finish line. It was so much fun!

We had another great team turnout. It was hard to tell since the racing was spread out over 2 days, but overall I count 10 racers representing Coates Cyclery in the XC. It was great to see all of you who came out on Sunday for support. Thanks for all the encouragement as we endured lap after lap.

Results:

Name:	Class:	Place:
	Cat3
Joe Kancavich	Clydes 35+	1
Ross Thompson	Clydes 35+	4
Michael Dowdle	40-44	6

	Cat2
Dan Aul	60-64	4
Jodi Martin	50+	1
Moises Molina	35-39	22

	Cat1
Yoshio Garcia	19-24	3
David Robertson	19-24	9
Jeff Dambrun	25-29	12
Mark Scheetz	Single Speed	7

Bonelli Park, Kenda Cup #1, Cal State #1

Hey everyone, I’m a little late on the race report due largely to the economy. Recent layoffs have those of us who still have a job working real hard (and I’m thankful for that). I know … we’re all getting sick of hearing about the economy; perhaps that’s why the Kenda Cup opener at Bonelli was the most successful race in a decade. For an entire day nearly 700 racers and over 2000 people total totally escaped the recession and enjoyed perfect weather, a great new race course, In-N-Out, vender tents, swag and the excitement of the Kenda Cup and State Series opener.

All new revamped venue

Go Kenda!

We had a total of 10 racing for Coates Cyclery and several other team members hanging out for support and fun. Our podium winners included Jodi Martin (1^st place, Cat2), Yoshio Garcia (1^st place of course, Cat1), David Martin (2^nd place, Cat2) and David Robertson (2^nd Place, Cat2). I would also like to extend a special thanks to Corey for the team swag.

Yoshio right at home on the big box

It was really fun so see everyone again and meet some of the new members.

Results:

Name:	Class:	Place:
	Cat3
David Scheetz	19-24	6
Ross Thompson	Clydes 35+	5

	Cat2
Dan Aul	60-64	4
Jodi Martin	50+	1
David Martin	65+	2
David Robertson	19-24	2
Enrique Resendez	35-39	26
Jeanne Scheetz	40-49	5
Paul Amodei	Clydes 35+	11

	Cat1
Yoshio Garcia	19-24	1
Mark Scheetz	Single Speed	9