Lyons Outdoor Games

The Lyons Outdoor Games were held this last weekend in Lyons, CO. Aside from dog competitions and bike demos they had a freestyle competition, creek race, and boatercross.

The creek race was held on the South Saint Vrain, a low volume manky creek. I showed up the night before so I didn’t race, but it was fun to watch. Tao Berman won followed by Andrew Holcomb and Jason Beakes. Surprisingly, nobody got hurt.

The boatercross was a 4 person team relay. The course included 25 pushups, a 100 yard sprint with your boat, stepping through tires, paddling downstream, through 2 upstream gates, and then a paddle toss over a gate but under the bridge before tagging the next person. It is an entertaining event for both spectators and competitors. Dane Jackson, Jason Craig, and Jonathon Shales asked me to be on their team and I agreed but it was a mistake. Dane and Jason did the first 2 legs and we behind by a lot. Jonathan went third and made up a lot of time and I passed a guy on the last leg. We were 4th out of 5, but it was better than last.

The freestyle competition took place in the A Hole, a small flushy feature. Almost all the tricks went but they were hard to execute and even harder to stick in the hole. Fortunately it didn’t take much time to paddle up the eddy.

In prelims on Saturday the cut was from 22 to 10. I had two decent rides and just made the cut coming in 10th place with 173 points combined. Last week at Buena Vista I was on the other side of the bubble so it was a relief to make it in. During semifinals on Sunday I went first. My first ride was bad but my second ride scored 97 points. After watching everyone else’s rides I was surprised that I had just made the cut again.

In finals we each had 3 rides. The best ride counted to determine the final place. Nick Troutman’s first 2 rides were awesome, but nobody else had high scoring rides. I was still in 5th going into the third ride and knew I had to do something different. I decided to throw my harder tricks first when I had energy and I saved the easy tricks for later in my ride. This worked and I was moved into second place with 120 points, but everyone had another ride. Stephen Wright stepped it up with a 148 point ride which put him in second and then Eric Jackson also had his high ride at 124 points moving me to fourth. Jonathan Shales had his high ride as well but at 110 points it wasn’t quite enough.

Men’s Freestyle
1. Nick Troutman
2. Stephen Wright
3. Eric Jackson
4. Greg Parker
5. Jonathan Shales
6. Dane Jackson
7. Bryan Kirk
8. Clay Wright
9. Andrew Holcombe
10. Kelsey Thompson

Women’s Freestyle
1. Emily Jackson
2. Elaine Campbell
3. Natalie Kramer
4. Eleanor Perry
5. Amy Leppo

Creek Race
1. Tao Berman
2. Andrew Holcombe
3. Jason Beakes
4. Erik Jackson
5. Clay Wright
6. Todd Anderson
7. Bryan Kirk
8. Nick Troutman
9. Kelsey Thompson
10. Geoff Galhoun