CB Devo bike racers roll to another win

Not without some carnage

By Than Acuff

While bike racing by nature is an individual sport, the team element is certainly a significant part of the high school racing scene and that was on full display Sunday, September 8 at the Haymaker Classic in Eagle as the CB Devo high school bike team suffered some carnage on an individual level but still rose to the top of the podium winning their second race in a row.

“Eagle features a hot and dusty course which rewards high power and good descending,” says coach Morgan Weinberg.

Finn Veit has always been the standout on the team racking up numerous podiums and wins in his four years on the team. But in Eagle, Veit crashed on a downhill and, after stopping in the feed zone for some repairs, battled back to ninth place from nearly the back of the pack. Unfortunately, he received some assistance with the repairs and thus a time penalty dropping him back to 21^st place. With the top five results factored into the team score, the loss of Veit’s points would typically be a massive loss to the team score, but other riders remained consistent while some stepped up their games in Eagle to fill the void.

Despite losing his lead on a crash on the first lap, Temple Robertson rallied to place second in the JV race to bring the most points to the overall team score and remain the current series points leader in his classification.

Brie Bender remained consistent as well to place fourth and bring another punch to the team totals, but it was the efforts of Ben Geisler, Sam Bullock and Nate Taylor that sealed the team win.

Geisler pedaled to his first podium finish as a high school racer taking fifth in the JV class, Sam Bullock moved up four spots from his result in the previous race to take 11^th in Eagle and Nate Taylor placed second in the freshmen race to tack on additional team points for the team win.

“The freshmen race was shortened to one lap due to weather,” says coach Weinberg. “The shortened race required an all-out effort and Nate rode hard and managed a second-place finish, his second podium in as many races.”

Kenny Bullock and Ebbet Weinberg also moved up numerous spots in the varsity class with their effort in Eagle. Ebbet moved up from 30^th in the first race to 20^th place in Eagle and Kenny rolled to a 23^rd place finish after finishing 35^th in the previous race. Ethan Armbrecht recorded his second top 10 finish in a row in the JV class as did Jackson Holsteen in the freshmen class.

The CB Devo bike team is off to Colorado Springs for their next race of the season on Saturday, September 21.