FLC Cyclists Podium at MTB National Championship

The Fort Lewis College Mountain bike team is grateful to be returning from the National Championship with a third place team finish and an individual champion. You're watching the local News Network brought to you by FastSigns Durango and Crystal Mart. I'm Connor Shreve. After a season of racing, nationals looked unlikely to happen after host city Asheville, North Carolina was decimated by Hurricane Helene.

Our thoughts go out to all those people that are living there. And so it was always like that. Oh, how bad is it going to be? And then it kind of sank in, "Oh, this doesn't seem like it's feasible." And we just sat with it. USA Cycling did their best and really stepped up. Bentonville came in and made it happen. Short notice, planned a whole national championship in a month.

Bentonville, Arkansas took over hosting duties and put on the national championship events on short notice. The switch pushed the season back by about a month, a challenge for racers who were targeting the event.

That was definitely our biggest conversation with our student athletes, was just saying, "Hey, come into this having fun. You're rested now and let's just, you know, you've done the work, you've done the training, let's just sharpen you back up and do what we can with it." You know, everyone's going to be in the same boat and some people are going to have better luck with their fitness in that period.

The Skyhawks finished third as a team behind the individual effort of McKayla Thompson, who won the Stars and Stripes, National Champions Jersey in the short track, along with a silver medal finish in the cross country race.

She exemplifies what our program's about. She came in as kind of a no-named bike racer out of the Front Range in Boulder area. And we've developed her and she's been something that's gone on to do lifetime and really, you know, shown what the program can do. And she didn't have the easiest race to win that short track. She slipped a pedal and was way back in the pack to start.

The extra time may have benefited Thompson who spent the summer racing professionally in the Lifetime Grand Prix series. Dan Gray added two top five finishes.

Overall the team did really well. You know, they had stayed super positive. It wasn't always the easiest things to do. And yeah, we had Mary Golden Feldy get second in the women's DH, which was really cool. Yeah, overall they just, they really kind of came together and figured it out.

Now the Skyhawks face a quick turnaround to prepare for the Cyclo-cross National Championships on December 12th.

Yeah, we'll be out to Louisville, Kentucky for that. Same course, same location for that, which will be fun. Take 12 to 15 riders for that and then we'll get a little break there and then well, yeah, we'll be excited. They just announced the next two years there'll be mountain bike nationals in Grand Junction, Grand Junction, Powderhorn area probably.

With that altitude advantage on the horizon, Burnett believes his team has a bright future.

We always do senior speeches at the end and that's always kind of that time of like, "Okay, how many people are we losing? How many people are we going to develop?" And we're only losing a handful. I think we have a good trajectory with it. And really a big shoutout to our freshmen. We had some really good freshmen, Owen Diehl. He was seventh in the downhill, top 10 in the dual slalom and also Race XC for us 'cause we had an extra spot and was top 10 in that. He had our last call up and ended up our second rider in the men's XC.

The Skyhawks will enjoy some time off after Louisville and then begin Rocky Mountain Collegiate Cycling Road Conference Racing next spring. Learn more about this story and others online at durangolocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I'm Connor Shreve.