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Cycling club pushes to summit of performance |
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Tuesday, 25 September 2007 |
 Senior management major and Club Cycling President David L. Forkner clears a jump on a practice trail at State Farm. Trey Mahoney
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by ASHLEY DAVIS
Sports Reporter
Starting their season strong in Wilkesboro, the Appalachian State University men’s cycling club had many top five finishes in the Chupacabra Challenge, including a first place finish by sophomore Sam Chalk in the Super Downhill race.
The Super D is a gravity race in which bikers’ race down a mountain encountering high jumps throughout the trail.
Mountain
bike challenges like the Chupacabra include some gravity races like the
Super D, the cross country race involving distance, and the short
track, a timed race which uses a wide lane for passing.
At the Chupacabra Challenge, junior cyclist Geoff Clark placed second in the short track race.
The ASU men’s cycling team, which currently has 41 registered members
on its roster, has not always had a large number of cyclists.
Senior David L. Forkner became the club’s president three years ago.
“After my first year it was pretty disorganized. There was probably 15 people at the meetings at the
most,” Forkner said. “And it just ended up falling apart more and more.”
Luckily, Forkner and a friend decided to step in and assume the club’s
leadership roles following the former president’s resignation.
In addition to increasing the size of the club, this season administrators decided to increase the type of
races that the team participates in.
While the team focused on road races in previous seasons, this year the club is also entering mountain
bike races.
“This year we had a lot of people that were starting to show interest so we started to push to make it happen,” Forkner said.
Contrary to the popular belief that Boone would be overflowing with
excellent practice trails for mountain biking, cyclists have had to
travel to other spots like Wilkesboro and Banner Elk in order to
train.
“It’s harder for us to get beginner mountain bikers, because it’s hard to get them to drive,” Forkner said.
“It’s a very common misconception that (schools like North Carolina State University) don’t have a lot
of mountain biking trails, but they have much more than we do.”
An advantage for the team, however, is the fact that the 2007 Collegiate Mountain Bike Nationals will
be held in Banner Elk from Oct. 26-28.
“It will be really exciting this year because the national competition will be right out our back door,” said
junior Daniel J. Wendover. “We’ve had great results in conference races so far this season, so
hopefully we’ll have a good showing at nationals.”
Following the mountain biking season, the team will begin racing in cyclocross, a form of cycling that
focuses on a biker’s ability to race, dismount and carry his bicycle through obstacles of barriers, steps,
deep mud or other impediments in laps around a course.
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