Jesse Lalonde Wins Single Speed World Championship Race
August 24th, 2005 by Tim GrahlPress release out of Gary Fisher:
Subaru-Gary Fisher regional rider Jesse Lalonde of Madison, Wisconsin traveled to Pennsylvania over the weekend for the Single Speed World Championships. With a commanding showing that shocked several in attendance, he scored the biggest win of his racing career.
Jesse’s trip to PA marked only the second time that he has ridden his mountain bike outside of the state of Wisconsin. That makes it even more amazing that the 26 year old bested a field of world class mountain bike pros for the victory.
Jesse, a cross country runner in college, had an excellent run at the chaotic start of the race. Once he mounted his fully rigid Gary Fisher twenty niner singlespeed he showed that he certainly knows how to ride a mountain bike too.
At the first checkpoint on the rocky singletrack course, Jesse already had a lead over chasers Travis Brown and Ariel Lindsley. He continued to keep the pressure on, making up time on the pedal sections and loosing slightly to the two Colorado athletes on the descents. Several other top contenders suffered mechanical failures at the hands of the unforgiving rocks. This basic equation lasted all of the way to the finish, where Jesse crossed the line with a slim 5 second margin over a hard charging Travis Brown.
At this eclectic event, winning the race did not mean that you won the championship. Promoter Eric Roman set up the event so that the top twenty finishers competed in a go cart championship for the overall title. Jesse won his first heat but wasn’t able to win the final. That means that Jesse wasn’t able to add the championship tattoo to his already impressive collection of body art.
This win marks another major win for an athlete on a Gary Fisher Rig. Previously in the year another regional athlete Dejay Birch won the Solo 24 Hour National Championship in the singlespeed category. Dejay was also at the SSWC, but had an unfortunate bike mix-up at the start that took him out of the running for the race.
Also racing the SSWC were Gary Fisher and Keith Bontrager. Gary was on a Rig with some very Gary modifications. Keith was on a converted Gary Fisher Sugar, the full suspension came in handy on the rough 27 mile course.
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I would like to know more about the Sugar Keith Bontrager raced at the SS worlds. I have a Sugar also. Thanks
This is what Keith posted elsewhere…
I’d ridden there before. I knew, more or less, what was coming, and prepared appropriately. I have two single speed bikes - one a rigid steel hardtail that is great in Santa Cruz. The other is an old Sugar that I’d raced in the TransAlp many years ago and had put out to pasture. I brought the Sugar because it has a little suspension travel in front and back, and that would be a good thing in the rocks.
The bike had vertical dropouts and I used a very old Sachs Aris rear derailleur with the strongest return spring I could find. I pulled the chain as tight as I could so the derailleur cage was pointing almost directly at the chain ring to keep the chain on.
The other key component I added to the mix were some tubeless wheels and the biggest tubeless tires (Jones XR) I had around, along with a pint (not exactly, but you get the idea)of sealant in each. I knew that I would not be graceful enough to ride the line through all of the rock gardens, so this was a set up I could ride straight through a lot of those sections with decent control and no pinch flats.
32×18 gears were fine for me on that course. I walked part of the wall, but gave up easily because I’d decided I could use the stretch. I was bonking and cramping a little by then too, and had no idea how far it was going to go up, so that might have been part of the motivation.
The bike worked pretty well, especially given that it took about an hour to throw it all together. I dropped the chain twice bouncing along in the rocks. Both times I felt it come off the front ring, which was just a regular 32 out of a triple set up. I will swap that for a plain ring and maybe put a chain guide on it too.
2 of the chainring bolts blew out at some point in the event too, so that might have been the source of the chain problem. The ring was one of T’vativs heat treated steel units and the ring didn’t fold. That was cool.
KB