US ISDE UPDATE

The US ISDE team continues to battle hard at this year’s ISDE, held in Argentina. After the second day the news is encouraging. Taylor Robert tops the good news list with consistently good special test times. With two days in the books he sits in second place in the E3 (500) class, less than a second out of the lead—not only in his class but for top individual. The rest of the team is riding well, too. Kailub Russell and Mike Brown both sit in fourth place in their classes (E2 and E3, respectively). The biggest setback came on day one when the team lost Zach Osborn. The team is allowed to drop its worst score every day, so the remaining Americans have to ride perfectly. The difficulty in doing that was already demonstrated when Charlie Mullins lost a couple of trail points on day two. His score had to be counted, and that dropped the U.S. team from second overall to fourth. France leads the list with incredible rides from Pierre Alexandre Renet, who leads both E2 and overall, and Christophe Nambotin, who leads E1. The E3 class is being led by Australian Toby Price, and he has helped place the Australian team in second. They, too, have lost a rider and will have to turn in prefect scores.

America’s Junior Trophy Team is having a spectacular ride. Justin Jones has turned in the second-best score of all the Junior riders and sits in eighth place in the E2 class. Steward Baylor is in 10^th in the same class while his brother Grant Baylor is in 26^th. Trevor Bollinger has also been turning in gold-medal test times and has the team in second overall. The Australians are leading that competition, demonstrating that the non-European teams can ride with the best riders in the world when they meet on equal footing and the Euros have to travel, too. Stay tuned for more updates.