Crested Butte Devo race team opens bike season on fire

“I could not be more excited and proud of them”

by Than Acuff 

While most, if not all, of the CB Devo high school bike team riders were on their bikes over the summer, in fact three are CB Devo coaches for the younger kids, the team got together for the start of team workouts on August 4 with coaches Alex Ellmer and John Landreth at the helm.

Ellmer coached the team last year and Landreth was called in to help out after four years with CB Devo and a history of coaching swimming back in Pennsylvania.

“They felt I would be a good fit and I’ve known our sophomore riders for four years now,” says Landreth.

Eleven athletes are on the team this year with 10 riding currently and are a young squad with two juniors, four sophomores and four freshmen. While preseason training did involve plenty of intervals, the coaches always add in some miles to get the kids out on the trails and continue building a base. A base that was already in place.

“Intervals are the bane of their existence,” says Landreth. “A majority of them came in with a good base. They know how important it is to have a base.”

But the proof comes out at races, and the CB Devo team opened the race season with a bang from the very first event, the JV boys’ race. Robert Spencer and Nate Taylor kicked the day off for CB Devo in the JV races and while both had starts near the back of their waves, they put the hammer down from the start line. Spencer was handed a start position near the back of the second wave and proceeded to charge through the course to cross in second place. Meanwhile, Taylor had a similar experience moving up from his 44^th place start position to finish in fourth.

“Watching those two go out and demolish it was the best start we could have had to our season,” says Landreth.

Tilly Rinderle continued the CB Devo hammerfest in the sophomore class. After spending her first year, last year in the top five of the freshmen races, she opened the 2026 season on top riding to a first-place finish, four minutes ahead of her closest competitor, in the sophomore race.

“She put in a lot of work the past year and had a phenomenal race,” says Landreth.

The freshmen drank the crush-it Kool-Aid as well and stepped it up in their race. The freshmen race is a time trial format, just rider versus the clock, to establish their start position for the next race and both Soren Eggebraten and Grace Tucker made the most of it.

Eggebraten smashed the course to win the freshman race, so much so that he will move up two classes and spend the rest of the season in the JV class.

“We were kind of expecting that given his summer of racing,” says Landreth. “With Soren moving up, that will give us a great 1-2-3 punch with Robert and Nate in the JV race.”

Grace Tucker rounded out the team scoring for CB Devo to seal the first-place result in Division 3 with a fourth-place result in the freshmen girls’ race.

“She is so fast,” says Landreth. “There is no quit in her and we saw that in the race.”

Jackson Holsteen had a great start to his season in the varsity class. His success last year as a sophomore allowed him to skip the JV age group and jump into the big pool of varsity riders, the only group to ride three laps on courses during the season, and he rolled across in 25^th place having passed seven riders throughout the three laps.

“He took on that challenge like a champ and has been an awesome leader for the team,” says Landreth.

Sullivan Reese moved up to the sophomore race class and opened the season strong placing 19^th while Walker Sumners, whose family moved to Crested Butte from Alabama, got his first taste of high school racing in Colorado and punched his way into the top third of the field to finish in 33^rd place.

“He did not back down at all,” says Landreth.

The team is riding the high of their first-place finish but remained focus in workouts as they prepare for their next race on Saturday, September 12 in Eagle.

“I could not be more excited and proud of them,” says Landreth.