The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Back in the saddle and charging
By Than Acuff
It looks like the CB Devo high school bike team picked up right where they left off last year winning the opening race of the 2024 season, the Cloud City Challenge in Leadville on Saturday, August 24.
The team of 10 riders started preseason workouts in early August with assistant coach Morgan Weinberg stepping into the head coaching role, Geo Bullock remaining in his spot as a coach and Brad Taylor helping as well.
“We ride three days a week alternating between structured training and trail rides to keep it fun,” says Weinberg.
The athletes are a mix of returning race veterans and two freshmen joining the high school racing ranks, and among the 10 riders is just one girl, Brie Bender.
“It’d be great to have more girls on the team,” says Weinberg.
The team headed to Leadville the day before the race to get some time on the course followed by their typical team campout prepared to make the most of the opening race on a course that caters to the CB Devo team.
“Our kids really like the course,” says Weinberg. “It’s a lot of singletrack and a little more technical than a lot of the courses and at high altitude which benefits us.”
Still, expectations were a bit tempered. While riders Finn Veit, Sam and Kenny Bullock and Ebbett Weinberg are starting out their second season in the varsity class and are Legacy riders having raced every year of their high school career, both Bender and Temple Robertson skipped the sophomore race class and are racing JV in just their second year of high school racing. With that in mind, Weinberg kept the plan simple for the athletes.
“For the first race I told them to just ride their own race,” explains Weinberg.
As he often is, Veit was in the mix up front through the first two laps of the varsity race with five other riders. Veit and another racer then pulled away on the third and final lap of the 18-mile course with Veit finishing in second place, a minute off the winner, scoring big points for the team.
“It was a good result for him,” says Weinberg. “He rode the course in a time of 1:18, that’s like 16 miles per hour on your mountain bike.”
Robertson and Bender were the next CB Devo riders to rack up team points. Despite skipping an entire race class between last year and this, Robertson dominated the JV field to place first, and Bender finished in fifth in her JV race.
“I’m really happy they had such good results, that’s huge,” says Weinberg.
Ben Geisler and Sam rounded out the team’s scoring effort as Geisler placed seventh in the JV race and Sam 15th in the varsity race to seal the overall team title at the race for CB Devo. Ethan Armbrecht placed 10th in the JV race, Ebbett and Kenny placed 30th and 35th respectively in the varsity race and Nate Taylor and Jackson Holsteen opened their high school race careers with fifth and seventh place finishes respectively.
“Obviously we’ve got some strong riders but when they move up categories, you never know what to expect,” says Weinberg. “We got a podium in every single category we raced.”
The team heads to Eagle for the Haymaker Classic on Sunday, September 8.
