Login

 

 

,

- Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Southern California Message Boards

 Jeep King of the Mountain Race 2- Madonna Inn
When the Jeep® King of the Mountain Series heads to the famous Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on Saturday, August 18, for the 2007 Mountain Biking World Professional Championships, the event will be a homecoming of sorts for the heavy contingent of sunshine state athletes selected to race for the sport’s most coveted crown.

Making its third-ever appearance in this scenic, cycling friendly city, the Mountain Biking World Professional Championships will feature 16 of the world’s elite athletes battling shoulder-to-shoulder in mountain-cross format for a share of the richest cash payout in the sport, topping $100,000, and the keys to a new 2008 Jeep Liberty.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will offer race fans a chance to witness up close and personal the jaw dropping spectacle of professional mountain bike racing, with its big air, high speeds, tight passes and colorful crashes. The fun begins at 11 a.m., with the opening of the Interactive Expo Village, followed by the serving of a complimentary lunch for the first 1,000 fans at 12 p.m. to coincide with the start of the World Professional Championships. All activities take place in the scenic backdrop of the Madonna Mountain.

In San Luis Obispo, the locals will have no shortage of fellow Californians to support, with the city’s very own Travis Collins, Alpine’s Cody Warren, Laguna Beach’s Brian Lopes, Los Alamitos’ Tara Llanes, and Temecula’s Eric Carter and Rich Houseman all slated to appear. Other racers vying for the Jeep King of the Mountain throne will arrive from locations as far ranging as Arizona, Hawaii, and on the international side, the Czech Republic, Australia, the UK and the Netherlands.


In addition to an elite field of pre-qualified national and international professional racers, each event will add two local racers as well as two wildcard participants based on UCI and NORBA standings. Information regarding local and wildcard entry into the Jeep King of the Mountain Series will be available at www.jeepsports.com prior to each race.

This year’s event will again be staged on the innovative Y-Cross racecourse, which combines the two most dramatic and popular forms of mountain bike racing into one unique discipline. Competitors begin the race on separate sides of the course (the prongs of the Y) before converging midway into a single course (the crux of the Y). In the bottom section, racers must navigate a series of banked turns, tabletops, step-down jumps and rollers before the track climaxes with an all-out sprint to the finish. The daredevil racecourse has been described as the ultimate format for mountain bike racing, as the overall winners must have a diverse set of skills to win the coveted title of World Professional Champion.

World Professional Champions are crowned based on a system of cumulative points earned throughout the Jeep King of the Mountain Series, which includes three races from August to September 2007. The season kicked off at The Canyons in Park City Utah on August 4, and following the event in San Luis Obispo, the series will head to Beaver Creek, Colo., for the grand finale on September 1.

Each race of the 2007 Mountain Biking World Professional Championships will be televised to a national broadcast audience on CBS Sports, representing the most expansive coverage of professional mountain bike racing in recent history. The race from San Luis Obispo will air on CBS Sports on September 23 from 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. EST (check local listings).

About the Jeep King of the Mountain Series
The Jeep King of the Mountain was established in 1993. Jeep is the title sponsor for the Jeep King of the Mountain Series. The Mountain Biking World Professional Championships are the sister competition to wintertime’s Skiing & Snowboarding World Professional Championships, now celebrating its 15th season. Other marketing partners for the Jeep King of the Mountain include Bike Magazine, Columbia Sportswear Company, Edge Advanced Shave Gel, John Paul Mitchell Systems, Madonna Inn, Mopar, Nalgene, San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce, San Luis Obispo County Visitors Bureau, Utah Sports Commission and Voler. During each race of the World Professional Championships, the athletes will be competing for the right to don the coveted John Paul Mitchell Systems black leader’s jersey, while also accruing points toward a cash bonus at season’s end.


Posted by JKOMRacer on 08/08/07


Responses: Post Reply  

    
 Top of Page |  Post a Reply |  Go Back |

SoCalMtB.com - Your Internet Resource for Mountain Biking in Southern California.