Steve Larsen (USA, LL Bean-Mongoose) and Mary Grigson (AUS, Gary Fisher-Saab) must've planned it.

It's really the only plausible explanation for why the men's and the women's cross-country racers mimicked each other with such uncanny accuracy. In fact, if it weren't for the obvious gender difference, I'd have sworn it was Mammoth Mountain madness, or a case of too much California sun. Either way, it was weird.

Both Larsen and Grigson entered this final as heavy favorites, and both were series points leaders with several Nationals under their belts. Both would throw off their standard strategy of coming on strong towards the end, in favor of a hard charge straight out of the gate, and both would assume crushing early leads which relegated everyone else in the pack to a fight for second place. Amazing.

WOMEN
A big crowd gathered to watch the women rock it up and the competition was expected to be fierce, but no one could have guessed that Grigson would set the pace from lap one and never look back.

The women were set to do five laps with no parade lap. Alison Dunlap (USA, Team GT), on a new GT with a special 'Sydney' paint job, had just returned from the Tour de Feminin in France, where she'd done quite well. Many speculated that she'd prove difficult competition for Grigson as she'd concentrated her training internationally this year, much of it on the road.

The word was that this was a roadie's course, so many thought that Dunlap had a chance to put the hurt on Fisher-gal Grigson, and on the first climb, all appeared normal as Jimena Florit (ARG, RLX Polo Sport), Grigson, and Dunlap battled it out for position. Ruthie Matthes (USA, Trek-Volkswagen) and Ann Trombley (USA, Residence Club/KZ), chasing hard, definitely in contact with the leaders, scrapped for fourth and fifth.

And then Grigson decided it was all over. She dropped the hammer and by the end of the first lap, had built a gap of nearly 20 seconds. Florit and Dunlap followed shortly after, at about eight seconds back, and then Matthes and Trombley, 50 seconds later. Shonny Vanlandingham was taking sixth, way off the back, and the rest of the field divided and remained scattered for the rest of the ride.

By the second lap, Grigson extended her lead and secured what would become the rest of the race, despite crashing on a later lap whereupon she casually got up, dusted herself off while joking about the fall, and moved on. She clearly felt confident at 1:30 ahead of everyone else and by the end of her race, she'd built a lead of almost three minutes.

The rest of the field had to make due as Dunlap and Florit battled it out for second and third. It looked for awhile as if Florit would take the number two slot, but a late puncture allowed Dunlap to surge into second.

"I was in second. I gapped her on the descent just by, like, 10 seconds. Then, starting in on the second half of the lap she flatted, so I was by myself then," explained Dunlap.

Matthes and Trombley took 5th and 6th.

MEN
Over 90 riders crowded the men's field at the start; they would go on to do a parade lap plus six full laps, in a race that would repeat the women's action almost to a tee.

Coming up off the parade lap, Steve Larsen led a group of front runners that included Pavel Tcherkassov (RUS, Gary Fisher-Saab), Tinker Juarez (USA, Volvo-Cannondale), and several other notables, and they maintained a blistering pace, clocking in at around 21 minutes per lap. The wind was kicking dust devils and it got fairly cold, but most ignored it in the face of the stellar repeat that was to hold everyone's attention for the next two hours.

Juarez went hard early on the climb, and it looked for a moment like Juarez and Larsen. Then all of a sudden, Larsen pulled a Grigson, putting 25 seconds on a chase group which at first included Tcherkassov, Juarez, Seamus McGrath (CAN, Haro-Lee Dungarees) and — surprise, surprise, nearly unknown Specialized-Nantucket Nectars rider Jeremy Kobelski. Travis Brown (USA, Trek-Volkswagen) was down by 1:05. Ryder Hesjedal (CAN, Gary Fisher-Saab), at 1:15. The top 20 were separated by two minutes.

Larsen was very aggressive and stretched his lead out to 45 seconds. Tcherkassov then Kobelski came in. It was the same for the rest of the race. By the third lap, Larsen had extended his lead to almost 1:15.

Larsen maintained his lead to about 1:20 and then went bigger. The question became..."Can he maintain it?" He did have a lead of almost 1:30, but as anyone who's ever flatted during a comp can attest, 1:30 can go quickly. Hesjedal was only down 3:20.

At the end of three laps, Larsen had faded a bit but still maintained a lead of almost 2:05. Juarez came in next, then Tcherkassov and Kobelski. The chase group had fractured into two groups of three riders each, one at 2:05 and one at 2:45. At the beginning of the final lap, it was still Larsen by 2:30, and at that point, he could only be stopped by a bad crash or a mechanical.

Juarez had dropped from sight. "Yeah, he blew up pretty hard," explained McGrath. "We passed him on the second to the last lap and he was looking pretty hurtin'."

"That was classic, what did you say?" laughed Dave Wiens (USA, RLX Polo Sport.) "You said, 'Tinker-Kaboom!' and it was true...there was like this little cloud of dust over him!"

He had dropped hard, all the way to seventh, which, after Larsen's lead, left Kobelski to take a very deserving second place. Kobelski had worked hard all day and the second place was the best finish of his career. Tcherkassov took third, and Wiens and McGrath took fourth and fifth, respectively. Truly a massive race, and a fantastic doubling of the earlier effort by Grigson.

— Mike Wolfson, thinking he's been here before, for MountainZone.com