Chalk Creek. Nathrop. Byoonah-Veesta. The Bovine Triangle. Whatever you want to call it, the homestead of Keith and Taf Darner plays host to MSC#2 this weekend in Colorado’s High Country banana belt, and will be the second stop on the 2008 MSC tour. Keith (El Toro Chocolate mas Grande) and his minions from the RPM/Yeti Team have spent countless hours shoveling, raking, wetting, re-wetting and just plain buttering up in general in preparation for this weekend’s festivities. They’ll play host to the MSC Gravity season-opener with back-to-back days of Dual Slalom and Mountain Cross. On the Endurance side, the Brown Bull’s got a multi-lap XC slated for Saturday and an STXC for Sunday that will use a portion of the MX course.

What’s new for 2008?

The big news is that the RPM folks have put in the time in order to get not one, but two 4X courses ready. Sports, Beginners and Juniors will race on one side while the Pros and Experts will get the other. This means TONS more practice time for everyone and a huge boost in on-course safety as the ability groups are separated. We’ll also be debuting a new light tower in order to better prep the higher skilled groups for international competition. We’ve switched to the UCI-preferred random cadence as well.

Other new stuff:

1. The inaugural running of the Men’s 35+ Open category in gated racing.
2. A reshuffling of the Junior Men fields: Junior Sport is now split into two age groups. This will allow the Junior Beginner fields to remain the playground of Junior Beginner riders only.
3. New season passes! For the first time ever we’re offering gated-only and DH-only season passes in addition to the Gravity Overall Season Pass. These will be on sale at registration.
4. New registration system – no more entry forms, no more waivers! It’s all automated!
5. DS qualifying – one-run only this year. Why? When a DS runs well we’re still on-site until 7:30 running the last brackets. Going to a one-run qualifier will save us about an hour-and-a-half or so early in the day. We’ll use some of that time savings to extend practice and we’ll devote the rest to getting you all home at a decent hour.

Who’s going to be on-site?

In addition to the usual collection of riff-raff we’ll see the Fox rig and the boys from Shimano on site. Other likely candidates are the folks from Yeti, Spot, JettMTB, Covic Racing and DT Swiss

What else is going on?

Dale Pale Ale – can you say beer can chicken? I bet you can. Look for the usual over-the-top-rectally-marinated-formerly-clucking smorgasbord from the President of Vibe himself (and his band of merry enablers) on Saturday afternoon. The Wahoos crew will also be on hand staffing the Wahoo’s Fish Tacos Hospitality tent – free tacos for anyone who gets on the cross country podium! They’ll be cranking up service around 4 p.m. but  quantities are limited. In addition to the beer, protein and tacos, there have been whispers of a beer-fueled Big Wheel Derby coming from the Dale’s Pale Ale camp…

And a few final clarifications

Gears are NOT required for Dual and 4X. We’ve heard a bit of scuttlebutt out there to the contrary and wanted to go on record with legitimate info. Also, we looked into adding a Junior Beginner 10 and under category for gated disciplines. At this point in the season we can’t make it happen (at least not without mucking up race operations). We do think that by splitting the Junior Sports into two age groups that we’ll clear up a lot of space in the two existing Junior Beginner categories. This is a pretty big step forward in and of itself from last season. We do have discussions about appropriate categories for the upcoming year on the MSC forums. Parents and athletes that have concerns should chime in and let their perspectives be heard.

For more race info please head to www.racemsc.com