After a great season of riding, we are nearing the end. But it's not over t'ill the Quebec Championships have rolled around! This year, the race took place in Mont Sainte-Anne, which as you probably know from the World Cup circuit, is a pretty gnarly course.  A few changes have made the track shorter than usual and faster in the open section. It truly was a case of “hold-on-to-your-panties” through the high speed section! The weather was hot and dry making the track

Mont Sainte-Anne, what a great place for the Quebec  Champs! A nice three day weekend of riding and racing in the dry sun. This same dry sun contributed to making this shorter-than-usual track into a very fast course. A few lines were changed in the open section that left riders no choice but to pin down as fast as they could… which means nearing 60km/h in one spot under the gondolas.

So as I was saying, the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and, well, the riders where charging down the mountain on the dustiest terrain we've seen all summer (except for those of us who've been to Panorama…sheesh!). Everybody seemed to be having fun…and then they start falling. This track claimed an incredible amount of riders. Check out the stats:

220 riders signed up for the race, 175 made it to the finals, 45 DNS or DNF due to injury or mechanical failure/flats. That's 20% that didn't cross the finish line!

We saw so many riders go down hard and being evacuated on 4wheelers that is was scary.

Qualifying went well and was fun, as usual.  Mitch Delfs (AUS) qualified in first place with a 2:08:174

Race day was great! The energy was in the air, riders were confident and the crowd was bigger than usual. Riders took their start in early afternoon and when all was said and done, Local rider Charles Alexandre Dubé took the win and the title with a blazing 2:11:879, closely followed by Lama Cycles rider Yann Gauvin at 2:12:399. Franck Kirscher (Lama cycles) had a great run as well but crashed near the end leaving him in 5th position, which is pretty darn good if you ask me ;)

Next weekend we head to off to Bromont for the last Canada Cup on the schedule. The track has been tweaked and redesigned so everybody I eager to see what Broms has to throw at us!

Ahhh the West coast! Although we have great riding in the East, it doesn't really compare to the thousands of vertical feet of descent you can find in British Colombia, hence the flocking of Quebecers and Ontarians every summer. For a second year in a row, we've packed up the LAMA van and headed out to the Promised Land with the team booth tightly packed and the bikes neatly hitched to the THULE rack at the back of the van.

Traveling with bunch of comrades is the best way to go. Eat, sleep live in the van for 4 days! It's a life style: love it or leave it.

This year, our itinerary was planned around nationals and the Canada cup, both talking place in Panorama BC. But before we made our way to Pano, we definitely needed to drop in at Camp of Champions based out of Whistler. We've been fortunate enough to hook up with the camp and provided them with some rides for the kids: 10 NS bikes, 2 Morewood Makulus and some Kali helmets. Jeff Young had extended an open invitation for participating companies to drop in and see what goes down at Camp. It was everything we expected and more! Camp is such a great place to be; the vibe, the people and the mountain…

We spent a whole week riding and living with the campers and staff. The thrill of being out in whistler with some of the best coaches is hard to put into words.  All I want to do is go back and “hang” with the guys, listen to very loud music during breakfast (!), shred some gnarly trails and send it on one of the coolest mountains out there! If you're lucky enough to have parents that will send you to Camp of Champions, make sure you are a perfect child to them! It would have been my dream come true to attend such a camp back in the day. The funny thing is, it still was a dream come true even though I'm in my late twenties!

Alas, all good things must come to an end…but the next chapter of our trip was a blast! Pack everything up, hop in the van and head East towards Panorama. Twelve hours later we hit our new home base for the next 2 weeks: Taynton lodge. We got ourselves a pretty sweet deal  in one of the upper village condos (oh yhea) with a great view, private hot tub and bike-in bike-out access. We couldn't complain.

The first weekend was the big one: Nationals. The track was super dusty and super fast with a winning time of 3:27:97 by Andrew Mitchell. Although there were many Quebecers representing in West coast territory, we didn't make a big splash. For some reason we didn't live up to the expectations we set during qualifying. Finals yielded an 8th and 9th place for the “frenchies”!  The fun part was seeing and spending some time with all the good people from the left side of our beautiful, yet very culturally different country.

During the week between the two races, we stayed put and enjoyed some time to relax and ride Panorama. It's a very dusty mountain but, nonetheless, very fun to ride. Just watch out for those grizzlies ay!

Friday rolled around pretty quickly, meaning we had to saddle back up again and get ready to race.  The track changed slightly for the Canada Cup by having the uphill section removed. It also took away a very fun technical section called “cliffs of insanity” but no one complained about skipping the uphill ;)

Rob Fraser took the lead with a 3:06:21 but the fastest man down the mountain was junior rider Nick Grimm from the Bryson Clan with a 3:05:69. Good Job Nick!

All in all we had an awesome trip filled with inside jokes, excellent riding, gourmet meals and great people to hang with. Next year we'll try and top this one off but it's going to be hard!

Cheers

Take a look at the new kid in town! The NS Majesty built up for Shawn Embree, the West coast Lama Cycles rep. It's slick, it's light weigh, it's solid and it's orange! Mad reviews have been popping up all over the place about this frame and top Slop Style rider Martin Söderström has been putting it to the test... and winning while doing it ;)

To find out where you can get one of these beasts check out our dealer locator

Big-up au team Blackmoutain morewood united pour leur performance à Champéry cette fin de semaine dernière. Voici un vidéo très bien de leur séjour en suisse.

Here is a pretty anwesome video from NS bikes rider Wojtek Zyc. Enjoy!

This blog entry has been inspired by the good times and great people with whom we've shared the last week in Whistler.

When we left Quebec for BC, we set the GPS arrival point to “Whislter” where Camp of Champions is based out of. After meeting up with Ken and Jeff in Vegas at Interbike last fall, we proceeded to work out a partnership for the summer of 2010 where campers and coaches would get to ride NS bikes, Morewood bikes and Kali helmets. Jeff invited us over to see what camp was all about.

Upon arrival, Jeff Young, the camp director, immediately hooked us up with a room and access to the compound. For those of you who don't know what the compound is, it's the coolest place on earth! Walk in and you'll find a basketball court, pool table, ping pong table, couches with frikin' huge TVs hooked up to playstation 3s, a half pipe, a few quarter pipes and boxes/banks, some gnarly dirt jumps with a mulch landing on the last one and a wicked air bag for practicing tricks (way cooler than the foam pit btw). So basically it's a place to chill after a good day of riding in the Whistler Bike park.

So we got all our stuff out of the Lama-mobile and quickly made ourselves at home in one of the dorms. Camp is rad! I just love chillin' in a room full of bikes with good music and friends. And that's what it was all about.

Friday was our first day in the bike park and we were stoked! We got up and got dressed as quickly as we could, hurried over to the meet point and tried to contain ourselves during breakfast and while waiting in line for our lift passes. So excited to get on the hill!! Once all of that was done and dealt with, we were on the lifts, only a few minutes to freedom.

We rode all day, following Ryan Berrecloth and Gareth Dyer anywhere they would take us. It was great to follow these guys since they new exactly where they were going and which lines to hit. It allowed us to pin-it down trails we had never seen or heard of before. Good stuff. I have to mention the fantastic lunch we had at the GLC. Try the GLC burger if you're in Whistler ;)

Evenings are filled with extra curricular activities and the compound is the place to be if you want to see insane tricks going down. Mike Montgomery came up with the “California Roll” one night. Check it out on pinkbike.com

The riding in whistler is insanely fun. Trail maintenance is impressive and the stunts are fun to ride. We captured some video for you guys to see what it's like.

We also hit one of the local pump tracks. Props to the boys building and maintaining these sexy playgrounds. You need to be quite fit to make your way around one of these. They are great training for all kinds of MTBing.

The difference this year, a part from the incredible setup we had, was riding Garbanzo. The Garbanzo chairlift take you almost as high as you can go on Whistler and gives you access to delightful trails and jaw dropping views. I only really realized how replenishing the Garbanzo experience was when Jeff pointed it out at super on our last night. It has this effect of allowing you to re-center yourself, gather your thoughts and let your passion for mountain biking take over. Deep stuff I know but you'll get it once you're up there.

We were blessed with good weather, particularly the last few days, great riding and awesome company. I must say, we felt right at home with the crew and the campers. On Sunday we took part of the group to a more challenging trail (In deep) and we did a “race clinic”. Basically we worked on line choices and techniques to make it through a ruff section with speed. Chocho and Yann were doing demos, trying to bomb down as fast as they could, showing the kids how lines don't always work like you want them to. The guys dug it and will most likely be applying those tips and tricks to their race runs in the future. Most of them are on their first year of racing or will be racing next year. So cheers boy! May your race careers be long and prosperous (sigh!)

To sum up, I can't think of a better way to spend time in Whistler then with some down to earth, good hearted fellow riders like the guys from Camp of Champions. Although our road trip must continue, it saddens me to watch the Mecca of mountain biking disappear in my rear view mirror. I'll just have to bide my time t'ill next year.

Cheers bros.

P.S. The title of this article “Whistler isn't real” is the property of Jeff Young ;) haha!

It was one of those situations where "I had to see it to believe it". Two years in a row now that we have been blessed with sunshine for the first Canada Cup in Tremblant. This year, the course was so dry we could actually make it to the start without being covered in mud (and those who have been racing it for several years know what I'm talking about!)

We played it smart this year and arrived on Thursday evening allowing us to settle in our luxurious condo and setup the team booth stress-free. We put the booth up in our usual spot. Creatures of habit I guess.

Ben's mother had prepared two HUGE meals for us: one chicken pie and one lasagna. And when I say huge…I mean humongous!! Take a look:

Friday Practice was fun! Still fiddling around with adjustments, compression, sag, rebound and bla bla bla. I just wanted to ride. Before we drove to Tremblant I had only clocked in 9 runs this season. NINE! That's what the BC kids tend to forget. We haven't been riding  for 2 months by the time Tremblant comes around and I recall hearing  Tyler Gnit (aka G-Unit) calling it one of the toughest tracks on the BC/Canada cup schedule.  Listen to me, excuses excuses excuses. But then again if you look at the top 10, only 3 Quebec racers made it in there… I'm just sayin'.

I took it nice and steady on Saturday and clocked some good runs in. Ben and I dissected the track into sections and made sure we knew how to handle each and every one before moving on to the next.  That helped a lot. Many times riders don't stop to look at what they're riding through. Sometimes, even though you're not feeling fast or comfortable going through a certain section, you don't bother stopping and you just keep “making it through” every time, throughout the weekend. I don't like that and I've come to know myself well enough to understand that I need to know exactly where I'm going  and where I need to point my bike in order to be confident and therefore fast . So we did just that: take the time to figure things out.

End of the day=super time…and that in turn means the biggest lasagna I've laid eyes on! After a plate and a half, I roll off my chair and make it to the couch were I spent the rest of the evening. I finally found the courage to walk up to the Red Bull Montes-Descends competition that was going on past sundown. Quite an event: racing downhill in the dark with flashlights strapped to your bike! Check it out REDBULL MONTES-DESCENDS.

Sunday, ohh Sunday. Wake up, hearty breakfast, hurry over to be the first in line for mandatory practice, do my practice run, go back to the condo, change, shower, eat, nap and presto I'm ready for the race. Now my race run went well except for one stall before the slick rock and…my front flat tire at the entrance of the last woods! Tremblant has claimed a couple of race runs with flats for me now so I'm gonna have to figure that one out for next year. It's a shame because I was feeling good on the bike not to mention that I was almost there. But this event hasn't left me empty handed. I'm pretty pumped for the next race in Anse St-Jean and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to accomplish what I set out to do for 2010. I'll fill you in on that later on in the season ;)

Cheers

P.S. This picture was taken without my knowledge a few moments after I flatted during my race run. I love my facial expression: it says it all!

Ya, believe it! It was sunny Sunday May 17th. OK, maybe we caught a little sun last Saturday but that's only after being drenched for the first 3/4 of the day. So it doesn't really count now does it.

7:30am, rise and shine. It's time to cook a champs brekkie, pack up the brand new pants, gloves, helmet and team Jerseys , grab the brand spankin' new team bike and hit the road towards Bromont. The drive to Bromont is always a pleasant one, knowing what lies ahead. We get there fairly early which usually entitles us to a good parking spot. Nope, not today: the parking is jam-packed with riders flocking to the chairlift. What else should we have expected. After all, its only the second weekend us Quebecers can actually ride Bromont using the chair lifts. And for all you West coast guys who's lives revolve around shuttling, you just can't do much of it here. Access roads are scarce and when they do exist we'd be trespassing and most likely get caught (i.e. driving up Bromont).

So we join the queue and a few minutes later we look back to see that it has doubled if not tripled. Great, next run we'll be sitting in the line-up for ages! Once we get to the top we decide to go for a run on our usual warm-up track which is a combo of the first 1/4 of trail #7 and then cuts off to "the ferns" which I don't think is actually on the map. A nice warm up run and man it feels good to ride in the dry! Getting back in the groove after a winter off non-bike related activities takes a few runs…and that's all we have before launching off the start gate in Mont-Tremblant this Sunday !! No wonder why the podium at the first Canada Cup (usually Tremblant) is crowded with BC racers. They've been riding for 1-2 sometimes 3 months and have already raced a couple of weekends while we're still trying to remember which brake does what.

So our day was pretty awesome although I did get more tanning done in the 45minute-1hour line-up than actual riding (total of 4 runs between 10:30am and 3pm) even if we ate lunch in the queue. I do have a nice tan though.

Still, the last run Ben Labelle, Simon Paquette and myself did down the 19 (The Old Quebec Cup race run) was the best of all 4. Nearing race pace, we plowed through rock gardens and railed through the uneven turns and berms this once-upon-a-time race track has to offer. A few close calls due to the premature eagerness of regaining last year's full speed but all in all a great descent leaving us with a big grin on our tanned mugs!

Well, a few days in the office and we're off to Canada Cup #1 in Mont Tremblant.

Peace out