Early Bird fields elite racers

Whitefish Pilot

It wasn't all zip lines and alpine slides on opening day at Whitefish Mountain Resort. Disc brakes were squealing, cow bells were clanging and forearms were left bleeding, too.

The Early Bird mountain bike race on Saturday officially kicked off the knobby-tire season for the trails on Big Mountain as warm temperatures and splitter blue skies greeted more than 40 competitors in this year's event.

"We think we have at least double the number of racers as last year," said Josh Knight, the resort's events department manager. "We've got racers from Polson, Missoula, Bozeman, all over."

Knight hypothesized the day's great weather and the lack of other bike races going on across the state contributed to the large turnout that was deep with local and regional talent.

"That's a stacked field," said Doug Shryock, as he watched from the side of the course near Ed and Mully's.

Shryock, no slouch on the bike himself, started the race in the expert field until a double blowout near the middle of the course forced him out of the race.

"I only brought one spare tube with me," he said smiling.

The 'stacked field" Shry-ock described included Sam Schultz, a Subaru-Gary Fisher sponsored rider hailing from Missoula. Schultz was the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic long team for the Beijing Olympics and part of the 2007 World Mountain Bike Championships bronze medal U.S. team.

Not surprisingly, Schultz pedaled away with the victory in a time of 1:25:37, nearly three minutes ahead of second-place finisher Evan Lawrence, of 53x11 Coffee in Missoula.

The field also included other perennially strong racers from the valley, such as Ben Parsons, Matt Butterfield and Clint Muhlfeld, all of the Sportsman Ski Haus team, Jason Keister, Craig Prather, Chance Cooke, Jason Schmidt and Rich Graves, who took the 40-plus age division in the expert class with a time of 1:48:35.

On the women's side, Lisa Curry cranked through the expert course in 1:49:25, and Savannah Matyas finished the sport division in 1:11:44.

The course, designed by Tom Danley, took riders 5.25 miles from the chalet, up to the top of the half-pipe area, down the summit trail to Bad Rock and back to the chalet.

"There is very little elevation gain," said Danley, describing the race layout to racers before the start. "It's more of an undulating course."

Expert men finished four laps, expert women three laps, sport riders two laps and beginners one lap.