Turns out plate No. 1 was fitting for Massey Baker to have on his bike.
The 24-year-old placed first in both open men races at Sima Slamfest, held at the Mount Sima mountain resort on Aug. 13.
Baker nearly broke a long-standing record in the process in the main downhill race “Lefty Loosey.” He completed the roughly two-kilometre trail with 335 metres of vertical drop in a time of three minutes, 54.10 seconds.
Baker is just the third rider to break the four-minute mark on the course. He won the event last year as well, but with a time 20 seconds slower.
This past weekend was the eighth edition of the more-or-less annual event since 2008. The mountain bike festival wasn’t held in 2011 because of the construction of a chairlift. In 2012 the AFD Gravity Cup Downhill Mountain Bike Race — which spurred the construction of Lefty Loosey — was held instead of Slamfest.
Two-time Slamfest champ Ben Kinvig, who placed third on Lefty Loosey this year, finished the course two years ago with a time of 3:55. Calgary’s Cody Ratte did it in 3:53 — the course record — at the Gravity Cup in 2012.
Baker also placed first in the “Drop the Clutch” competition, held on a roughly three-kilometre course of a machine built flow trail, this year.
“Our numbers were down from last year and I think that may have been due to the fact that a lot of people were out of town,” said organizer Josh de la Salle. “I think next year, if we do it again, we’ll try to do it on a Wednesday night because Wednesday nights seem to be attracting more people. Wednesday nights we’ve been breaking 150, 160 participants — people at the hill. So we’ve been getting more people out during the week than on the weekend.”
Contact Tom Patrick at tomp@yukon-news.com
Lefty Loosey
Open men
1st Massey Baker — 3:54.10
2nd Phil Beausejour — 4:03.46
3rd Ben Kinvig — 4:05.96
4th Josh de la Salle — 4:07.20
5th Julien Revel — 4:08.18
6th Sam Reimer — 4:12.95
7th Liam Mather — 4:13.96
8th Tyler Tukendorf — 4:23.88
9th Curtis Vandale — 4:54.57
10th Nigel Sinclair-Eckert — 5:31.13
11th Francis Belanger — 5:56.41
Open women
1st Ziggy Reimer — 5:58.83
2nd Egle Barnes — 6:04.65
3rd Jaylene Goorts — 6:04.98
4th Rebecca Mann — 8:51.73
Drop the Clutch
Open men
1st Massey Baker — 7:26.56
2nd Tyler Tukendorf — 7:30.41
3rd Sam Reimer — 7:31.95
4th Curtis Vandale — 7:35.46
5th Phil Beausejour — 7:39.53
6th Liam Mather — 7:49.38
7th Nigel Sinclair-Eckert — 7:59.37
8th Francis Belanger — 8:31.10
9th Ryan Soucy — 10:39.55
Open women
1st Jaylene Goorts — 8:27.81
2nd Meagan Wilson — 8:28.94
3rd Ziggy Reimer — 9:02.81
4th Egle Barnes — 9:06.57
5th Rebecca Mann — 9:39.19
Youth
1st Sapphira Oettli — 17:18.11
