Chris Kane Racing

2010 has been a momentous year for me. Last time we talked, I was up in Washington at the Colombia Cup, where I ended up winning both days of the competition. It was a great weekend up there, perfect weather, a great place to ride, and I highly recommend making your way out to the event next year. My next four rounds of the nationals were immensely successful as well. I ended my two-week trip back east with a victory in Rhode Island and two victories from New York.

            I felt good right from the start in Rhode Island. I showed up a few days early to get used to the time change, and make sure my race bike was in good running condition. The bike ran awesome all through practice, and I was looking forward to the following two days of competition. Saturday started out very stressful. Through the first 6 sections, Pat Smage and I were both clean. I began to get worried that there would be no difficult sections to separate the points between us. Luckily for myself, Pat had an uncharacteristic five in a fairly easy section, and the rest of the sections from that point on were difficult enough to spread the points out between us more. I finished the lap confidently, and maintained the small lead I had over Pat. I knew all the sections were cleanable, and it was my goal for the rest of the day to maintain my lead by striving for the perfect lap. I ended the day with only a two point final lap, which helped me seal the victory. After winning on Saturday, I knew I lit Pat’s fire, and he would come back with a vengeance the following day. He started out the day with a big mistake in the first section, but he put his head down, and caught up from the deficit. I felt as I could have won, but I threw it away on a few sections here and there throughout the day. I was very upset that a simple dab in the easiest section of the day ended up costing me the win, since Pat only won by one point.

            During the week in between the nationals I traveled with Dale Malesek and stayed with John Frances who has an awesome place to ride about 50 miles from New York City. The place had some of the best riding I have ever seen. It had huge grippy rocks, walls, and slippery creeks. I had a productive training session, and Keith Wineland, Ron Commo III, and Mike Leonard were able to join us for one day. We also went on a long trail ride up the side of a mountain, on a huge cliff, where you could see the skyscrapers from New York City. Coming from California, it was amazing to me that you can ride at a place in the wilderness so close to a huge city. Eventually, we had to leave and head to the nationals in Cayuta, New York.

 I was naturally confident coming into the event, since I had won the last two rounds of the season there the previous year. Before the event, I spent some time testing and experimenting with the bike’s gearing to figure out what would work best for the large hill-climbs in New York. While testing, I discovered that fourth gear on the Gas Gas is perfect for hill-climbs. With the six-speed transmission in the Gas Gas, it has a smaller gap between 3^rd and 4^th, making fourth gear much more useable. I knew this would help me to succeed, since a majority of my competition wouldn’t be able to use fourth. I started out Saturday a little behind in the beginning of the lap, but slowly crawled my way back into contention for the win by the end of the lap. I knew I could easily improve from my first lap score, and did just that. My day ended with two more very solid low loop scores and my third victory of the year. Going into the next day’s competition, I was very bound and determined to not let Pat rebound from the first day and beat me again. Right from the start, I lead all three laps, and was the only Pro rider to make it through the most difficult section of the day. I also cleaned one section twice, where no other rider had a better score than a three. I was very pleased with my results from the two weekends, and I am looking forward to getting some more practice in before heading to Colorado and Donner.

            That’s all my trials news going on lately. On the Enduro side, the first round of Endurocross is July 17^th in Vegas, and I will be there competing with some of the best off-road riders in the world. Hope to see you all either at Vegas, Colorado, or Donner in the next coming weeks.