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By Fred Dreier
Photo: Rob Jones
This coming weekend, October 24-25, Adam Craig is strapping on the full-face helmet and body armor, climbing on his big-hit bike and competing in the Jeep 48Straight, formerly Jeep King of the Mountains competition. The competition features dual slalom racing against Greg Minnaar, Steve Peat and Brian Lopes, among others. Why would America’s top cross-country man want to go toe-to-toe with the big dogs of international gravity racing?
“It’s a good excuse to ride my bike and have fun,” Craig told VeloNews when we phoned him up last week.
We caught up with Craig to chat gravity racing, the Olympics and what’s on his plate for 2009.
VeloNews: How did you get involved with the race?
Adam Craig: I was somehow casually talking about it with Chris Van Dine over tapas in Madrid. I was like ‘Oooh, I should do it!” and somehow word got to the promoter, who got in touch with me and said I should do it. I mean, it’s just like any of the other random weird things I do. Giant told me they’d support it, which makes things all good.
Photo: Fred Dreier
VN: What kind of prep have you been doing?
AC: Well I have a Trance X medium five-inch bike, which is what [teammates] Amiel [Cavalier] and [Jared] Rando are racing slalom on these days. I did a slalom race up at Mount Hood two weeks ago and had a good ol’ time. I’m not really doing anything better after it, and I need to get better a jumping. I got third out of about a dozen dudes. I’ve also been riding dirt bikes, which is sweet.
VN: So it’s been more than a month since the Olympics, and I imagine you’ve had some time to think about what went right and what went wrong. What went wrong?
AC: I’ll view the entire experience with fond memories, but the actual race, I’m pretty bummed that we blew it that bad. I think my problem was that I had time to come down just before the Olympics. I had been racing so hard and so much since the beginning of the year, which was fine. We got into our groove of travel, race, rest, travel, race, train, repeat. Then we came home and had a week of chill and then nine days in Korea to train. My body just kind of went into hibernation, and then I wasn’t able to get out of that on Olympic day. Then I had some more crazy travel to Australia and then back to Europe, and I was right back on track. It was almost like we had it too good at the Olympics.
VN: When you look back at the 2008 season, which races are you most happy with?
AC: Those World Cup races in Offenburg [Germany] and Schladming [Austria] produced fairly average 8th place finishes, but being able to ride at the front of a World Cup at both races for the first half opened my eyes up. Those were the races I will take motivation from.
VN: Not the Canadian World Cups, where you finished on the podium?
AC: No. I don’t want to sell myself short, but those two races didn’t have full fields, and they were right in my backyard in terms of what kind of riding I’m good at. They were sloppy and technical. I rode strong, but those weren’t the races that showed me what I’m capable of doing at a World Cup.
VN: With no Olympics on the immediate horizon, are you going to branch out in 2009?
AC: Yeah, I’d like to do a couple of epics, maybe the Cape Epic and then the BC Bike Race. I want to finally skip a World Cup — that is a goal. I have started and finished every single World Cup since 2003 when I signed with Giant. I am going to not start a World Cup next year and it is going to be sweet. I want to take my spring at home, maybe do one of the Avalanche races and some more slalom racing. I want to take two years and branch out, and I’ll see how it’s received and how I like it, and then re-focus on the World Cup for 2011 and 2012. That means I’ll probably win a World Cup next year because I’m having fun. We’ll see.
