Last weekend at Ride Rock Creek in Zirconia, North Carolina, Durango’s Asa Vermette showed once again he is one of the fastest downhill mountain bikers in the country. Vermette took care of business by winning the 2024 USA Cycling Gravity Mountain Bike National Championship in men’s elite downhill.
Vermette finished the 0.7-mile downhill track in 1 minute and 51.399 seconds. This was over a second faster than any rider. Austin Dooley came in second with a 1:52.475.
“It was pretty much perfect,” Vermette said. “I had a great weekend. Practice was going smooth, I was just having fun in practice. It was sweet being back at a local race where I was having fun every lap and just enjoying it. The race run, I couldn't have gotten it any better. I definitely laid it all out there and had a perfect run.
There was a little confusion with the results. Vermette, age 17, signed up for the pro field but he was put in the junior standings. The juniors and the pros raced on the exact same course. Vermette said the race organizers stacked the juniors with the pros so they dropped into the course at the same time.
So despite being listed in the junior results, Vermette technically won the men’s elite/pro and men’s junior national championships since he had the fastest time of anyone.
Vermette said he loves Rock Creek and has ridden it five or six times now. He previously won the men’s junior national championship there.
He said the downhill course was super fast with man-made rock gardens and big compressions. Vermette said getting all the lines perfect was required for a good run and he enjoyed the jumps at the bottom.
Like in the World Cup events, Vermette started slower in the first split. He had the second-best first split. But he dominated the second split and was half a second clear of anyone else and over a full second clear of any of the men’s elite riders.
Vermette was the third to last rider to go so he had to wait to see if Ryan Pinkerton or Dooley could beat his time. They could not.
Next up for Vermette are the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Pal Arinsal, Andorra, in late August.
Durango’s Opal Barber also had success last weekend at Ride Rock Creek. She won the enduro women’s junior 15-16 national championship with a time of 20:12.5 on the five-stage junior enduro race which totaled 4.1 miles.
She was 10 seconds ahead of second place in her class Mary McLarnon from Steamboat Springs.
Barber said the weekend was hard because the practice time for downhill and enduro overlapped at times. She had her enduro race on Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, she had qualifiers for downhill and then she raced downhill on Sunday.
“I'm feeling really good,” Barber said. “I was really nervous for enduro. The national champion from last year was the girl I was racing against. So I was super nervous. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she's going to beat me. Oh my gosh, this is so scary.’ But it actually went really well. I ended up placing first in every stage.”
Barber said the trails at Rock Creek were nothing like the trails in Durango. She said in the enduro course there were very slippery tight corners with a peanut butter-like trail consistency around trees. There were also a lot of slippery roots.
She said she wasn’t confident in practice for enduro but the course dried out for the race.
Barber finished eighth in the women’s junior downhill 16-17 class with a time of 2:27.294.
“It was pretty good,” Barber said about the downhill race. “The balance between enduro and downhill was pretty rough. There was only one other girl in my age category who was racing enduro and downhill. So the rest of these girls were studying this course and they were riding this course for like four days straight. So they knew this course really well. I was also trying to memorize enduro courses and downhill courses and trying to find my line. By the time the downhill race came around, I wasn't super confident on like, the course. I couldn't memorize it too well.”
Barber said she really loves both downhill and enduro and doesn’t know which one she wants to pursue. She likes the challenge of doing both.
Along with Vermette and Barber, there were many Durangoans at Rock Creek like Gunnar Enisgn, who finished second in the 19-29 men's enduro, Milo Deem, who finished fifth in 15/16 men's junior enduro and others.
Barber said it was great to hang out with some of the other Durango riders. She said she met some people who moved to North Carolina from Durango. Barber also said it was nice to have her Durango Devo team there. They helped her walk the course, keep everything organized and it was nice to have her teammates cheering her on.
Vermette’s winning downhill run from his GoPro can be found here. The race replay can be found here. Vermette’s run starts at 25:50 on the race replay.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
