Here is a multimedia race report with a beat!
Hope you enjoy :-)
As many of you know, Dalezilla, is into BMX racing. This weekend Dalezilla competed in the California State BMX Championship Qualification races at Santa Clara. During the practice session, he got squirrelly going down the front straight, ran off of the track, down the hill and into the retaining fence. Needless to say it rattled his cage!!! I had him sit out for a while so that he could collected his composure - remember he just got his cast off this last week after breaking his arm up in Napa Valley at a Redline Cup Qualifier in April.
After he had settled down, I had him go do a couple of warm-up laps just to get his head back into the game - Dale has a tendency to shutdown after a crash and it is hard to get him jump started again.
In the first qualifying heat, he came in 4th out of 8 riders but didn't look like the boy that I've seen racing out here for the last few weeks. The first 2 riders moved onto the main event. In the 2nd qualifier he looked even further off the pace and came in 3rd - the first 2 riders moved onto the main.
Now he is down to his last chance - the 3rd qualifier. I told him he only need to come in the top 3 and the most important thing was not to crash out. He rode a conservative race but still finished 2nd - good enough to make the main event. That's all I needed him to do....
As we sat in the staging area before the main event, it was clear the kid had not regained his killer instinct after the earlier crash in practice. At this point, as a coach and father, the only thing I can tell him is to go do the best he can do and no matter what, I will always love him and I'm proud that he is in the main event competing against some of the best boys in his category from across the state. I also spent a lot of time just trying to get him to laugh so that he wasn't depressed about his earlier efforts.
It was do-or-die time as his moto was called to the gate. I had a pretty good feeling about this because I saw just a glint of the killer instinct I have seen in my son before. He was so focused sitting at the gate, staring at his mark, waiting for cadence to be called and ready to pounce. When the gate dropped, he launched himself down the track and sat in mid-field 1/2 way down the main straight - then he started to move up. By the entry to the first turn he was in 3rd and had a head of steam. At the end of the turn he hit a jump that has a tendency to throw the backend of the bike out since you are still rounding the left hand turn. Dale baubled the landing and lost some speed.
Madman Matthew Sterling passed him on the back straight and Dale was in 4th. Dale hung in there and coming out of the 2nd turn and onto the rhythm section, started to gain on the leaders. He passed Matthew going into turn 3 and almost got by Will Larsen but was pinched off in the turn and it was a drag race going down the final straight and across the finish line. Dalezilla ended up in 3rd!!
I am so proud of the effort he put in to pull himself back together - 3rd place in a race that includes most of the best riders in his class from around the state is not too shabby!!!
To get a better feeling for what a BMX race is like, here is a link to the main event for the California State Championship Qualifier at the Santa Clara BMX track. This is the 7 year old intermediate boys although 2 of the kids here are Experts - only 1 of which beat Dalezilla.
BTW, Dalezilla is the boy closest to the camera in the blue kit.
View Dalezilla's Profile on Loop'd Network:
No comments:
Post a Comment