Stinger Buzz

It’s about the middle of the summer riding season here in Colorado and Team Honey Stinger/Trek is hitting its stride. The MSC Blast the Mass was this past weekend and with a familiar XC course for our local Roaring Fork Valley riders, the team had a strong showing and landed two more podiums. Check out photos from the race below:

Len Zanni in the Pro Men's start

Team Captain Len Zanni battled it out with Jay Henry and Travis Sheefer in the pro men’s race to finish in a strong second place.

Jay, Travis and Len grind up the climb on lap 2

Also in the pro men’s race, Max Taam finished 6th, Ryan Dorsey in 8th and Ben Portilla ran his bike across the line (tubulars proved to be a bad idea) but still finished in 13th.

Ben Portilla

Josh Cullen and Michael Hayes had solid finishes in the Cat 1 division.

Josh (center) and Michael (right)

In the pro women’s race, Kelley Cullen continued her winning ways with another second place finish. Sari Anderson, 3-months into her post-kiddo comeback, fought through the hail that started just minutes after Kelley finished and ended up in a solid fifth place.

Kelley Cullen leads out the pro women.

Sari grits her teeth through the hail at the finish.

Dirty girl.

Next up for many team riders: XC Nationals in Sol Vista and the brutal Breck 100.

Scott McCalmon charges at Teva

So many races, so little time.

Two weekends ago (sorry for tardiness), Team Honey Stinger/Trek adopted a ‘divide and conquer’ approach with riders heading to both the MSC Chili Challenge in Angel Fire, NM and the Teva Mountain Games in Vail, CO.

The Teva Mountain Games, which has grown to be the largest adventure sports festival in the country with over 40,000 spectators and 3,000 athletes, featured a XC course with over 1,000 feet of climbing each lap. A huge field of pro and expert riders showed up including big guns like JHK, Jay Henry, Georgia Gould, Heather Irminger and Katie Compton. The weather was beautiful, if a little hot, and the race featured a new (built the week before?) singletrack on Vail Mtn called Hank’s Hideaway that started soft and loamy but soon turned to a dusty, brake-bumped dust pit.

JHK and Georgia had convincing wins in the pro field, both winning by almost three-minute margins. Stinger rider Scott McCalmon finished in a strong 17th place in the Pro category and Max Taam, in his first MTB race of the year, finished in 23rd.

In the expert field, Honey Stinger rider Peter Kalmes raced to a second place finish in a tough field of almost 70 dudes. Rob Russell from Honey Stinger also finished on the podium with a third place in the Singlespeed category. Check out a full report and great photos from the Mountain Flyer magazine.

Angel Fire treated riders well as pro riders Ryan Dorsey, Colin Osborn and Len Zanni placed 7th, 10th, and 12th respectively. It’s a long haul down to Angel Fire from anywhere but the cross country course is one of the best around as it really rewards the all-arounder as none of the climbs are too steep, there’s technical climbing and descending and the super fast downhillers can generally make up some time. Next Mountain States Cup stop is Snowmass in July.