Well, it’s Monday, and more specifically, the Monday after the first two boardercross races. It went… not as planned. I never made it out of a heat, and took 9th out of 16 on both days. On both days of racing, my heats were the exact same. The first day, I discovered that since I had the sixth seed (because I went to last year’s Nationals, I was ranked sixth at the start of the day), I got second gate choice in my heat, which was pretty cool. I also discovered that my friend Benny was racing against me in what was his very first competition ever, and he did well (even though he got last). The entire race, I was literally battling for second place against a guy I had met before the race named Lachlan, from New Zealand. He initially took the lead against me, but I passed him around the second corner. By the time we were around the third corner, he had caught up and we were basically holding onto each other while maneuvering the tight turns in an attempt to stay on our feet. On the sixth turn, we both slipped out and fell, but he got up faster and won the race against me, which was extremely disappointing. You can view the video of our start and the first turn below (I’m the one in the blue).
The first day went well for Isaac and Jadyn, with Jadyn taking the bronze medal, and Isaac beating out our friend JR to take second and make it out of the quarterfinals into semis. He lost in the semifinal, but due to an extremely weird complication where a rider raced in the semifinal where he shouldn’t have been (and that resulted in our friend Bodie not qualifying for the finals after he had qualified before), the race was re-run, but nothing changed, and he still got last. In the consolation final, the other two riders had left, so it was a 1-on-1 race between Bodie and Isaac, where Isaac lost (it was a really exciting race to watch, though). Overall, Isaac took 6th place out of 15.
The second day, I got my race board, which I had got in the mail the day before, set up and ready to go, albeit without ANY wax on it, and raced on that. The day went noticeably worse for me, taking the same placing again, but losing the race to Lachlan by a lot farther this time. Isaac didn’t make it out of his first heat and took 11th, but on two high notes, Jadyn and Bodie both took second place and got the silver medal.
Overall, it was a fun time, getting back into the swing of racing and prepared for next week’s races, in which I am sure I’ll be prepared and ready to go. My goal is to make it into the finals of a competition, and I’m going to keep racing until I do.