• Preview
• Women's Cross-Country
• Men's Cross-Country
• Short-Track Cross-Country
• Dual Slalom
• Downhill

	click

Geoff Kabush (CAN, KONA Factory Team), though friendly and positive at the races' end, had to be bummed. Kabush worked like a dog to build a serious 40-second lead in the first five laps, only to watch Steve Larsen (USA, LL Bean/Mongoose) and Seamus McGrath (CAN, Haro/Lee Dungarees) blow by him as he struggled with a devastating flat at the end of lap five.

"I took a chance by running light tires and tubes. I was trying to keep it smooth, then just hit a sharp rock on lap five. I felt really good in the race, so I'm disappointed," said Kabush.

The flat came at the fifth of six laps, effectively killing his opportunity to chase Larsen and McGrath. It was just too late in the game, and Larsen took the turn of luck and ran through the last lap after a start that, at least in the beginning, offered the fans a number of possible trophy-takers. Kabush finished out at third, 2.33.61 down. The hard luck he rolled into packed an extra punch as many in the field are still smarting from Larsen's comments of last week.

"When Steve Larsen says things like he did last week, that the rest of us are riding for second place, all that does is motivate the rest of the pack. On lap one, when Ryder Hesjedal and Pavel Tcherkassov were in front on the climb, I was behind Larsen. It felt so slow. I had to get ahead of him to get a clean line into the singletrack."

	click

The course started at a short and sandy uphill, which had to be ridden hard straight off the line to position-up for the singletrack, which, in the truest sense of the word, didn't afford passing opportunities. A lead in the 'track was a lead in the race, but for riders like Tcherkassov and Tinker Juarez, who took those early leads, the overall difficulty of the course, the dust, and the heat melted podium slots into fourth and seventh places respectively.

Larsen was a little more humble this week, and admitted that he wasn't having his best day:

"The first time through the feedzone, every bone in my body hurt. But you've got to ride through your bad days, and if I can win on a bad day, I'd have to have a pretty good chance in the series overall. But once again, it all comes down to the final, so we'll just have to see what happens on that day. Sometimes you need a little luck to win. I rarely get it."

NORBA series finals head to Mammoth Mountain Resort in early September.

— Michael Wolfson, for MountainZone.com