It had been 672 days since the last BC Cup downhill race and there was a lot of pent up enthusiasm waiting to be let loose at the opening BC Cup/Canada Cup race of the reinvigorated 2021 cycling season. With over 300 riders registered, including 9 riders in the inaugural Adaptive Mountain Bike category, Fernie Alpine Resort would set the stage and kick off the race season that everybody has been waiting for.
Check out this video by photographer/filmmaker Jackson Parker.
The opening weekend of BC Cup/Canada Cup racing would be a test of both early season fitness and patience as a massive registration list would mean longer than usual wait times for check-in, practice runs, and chairlifts.
Once the racing got underway, Village of Anmore resident Kirk McDowall (Dunbar Cycles Devinci) would claim the top spot on the Pro/Elite Men’s podium and Rachel Pageau from Quebec would finish with the fastest time among Pro/Elite Women. Coming off a recent UCI Mountain Bike World Cup win in France just two weeks prior, Jackson Goldstone of Squamish, BC was first in the Junior Expert Men’s category and Emmy Lan (Commencal Canada) of Comox took the top spot among Junior Women. It was Landon McGauley of Kamloops that took the historic first win ever in the Adaptive Mountain Bike category as part of the Dunbar Summer Series.
After waiting over a year between the last BC Cup race of 2019 to the first race of 2021, riders won’t have to wait nearly as long for the next BC Cup race as the second event in the series will take place during a rare mid-week race at Panorama Mountain Resort on Wednesday, July 21st. The BC Cup series will then take a brief break and yield to the Canadian National Downhill Championships taking place at Kicking Horse Resort in Golden, BC on July 25th. The BC Cup picks up again with a race doubling as the 2021 BC Provincial Championships at Big White Resort on August 8th. The penultimate BC Cup race is scheduled for August 29th at the Steve Smith Memorial at Mount Washington and after almost a month-long intermission between races, the 2021 series will conclude at the Coast Gravity Bike Park in Sechelt on BC’s Sunshine Coast.
For more information and to register for the BC Cup pb Cobotix Downhill Race Series, go to:
https://cyclingbc.net
/about/disciplines/mountain/2020-bc-cup-downhill-series-p-b-cobotix/