Current UCI World Four Cross and UCI World Cup Champion Brian Lopes(Oakley) made a appearance at the SportsMobile Fresno Cyclocross Series Final race. The event takes place at Woodward Park in Fresno and the race course features some sections of the MTB Progression Park. The course took advantage of the awesome berms and rollers at the MTB Progression portion of Woodward Park to create a fast course that was technical and challenging. Keith DeFiebre (Scott/Ritchey) was the overall SportsMobile Fresno series winner for the 3rd straight year. The ABR Championship main event race came down to a four rider break-away of Lopes, DeFiebre, Fresno's Steve Ray (Stevens Bicycles), and California State Cross Champion Sam Ames (Simply Fit) of Bakersfield. The four riders came into the last lap even, but after a flurry of attacks it came down to DeFiebre and Lopes sprinting for the win. DeFiebre gapped Lopes going into the last turns near the finsh, but clipped a pedal allowing Lopes to get back on terms. Then World Champion Brian Lopes added another win to his credit taking the photo finish sprint over Fresno Series Champion Defiebre by a small margin on the line. Local phenom Steve Ray claimed the bronze medal on the day with his third place finish 5 seconds back.There sure seems like there is a lot of racing going on in Fresno these days. I may have to take back my comments about the Sierra Foothills being the hotbed on racing for 2008...
Lopes, who is sponsored by SportsMobile, will not be representing GT in 2008, but will be staying with all of his other sponsors, such as Oakley, Kenda and SportsMobile. His bike sponsor will be finalized soon. For info on Lopes you can go to BrianLopes.com, and for info on Keith DeFiebre's Central Coast MTB race series which starts Feb 10 in Monterey you can go to www.cccx.org.
UPDATE: The good folks at Sicklines.com also have some coverage.
1 comment:
Lopes is a pure animal on the bike~ Watching that race was something I would pay for as it came right down to the end for the leaders. Thanks to JP for putting on such a fun series of races, it was great to try my first coss races ever.
Tom
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