Durango Roots: How Chris Blevins and Riley Amos Punched Two Tickets to the Paris Olympics

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It’s no secret that Durango, Colorado is a motorcycle city.

From the a whole lot of miles of trails that start downtown and climb onto the encircling mesas earlier than heading into the excessive nation above, to the legacy of champions — like first-ever cross-country world champ Ned Overend and Vuelta a España victor Sepp Kuss — who name Durango house, the small southwestern metropolis is a very good place to journey bikes.

It’s such a great place, the truth is, that since mountain biking grew to become an Olympic sport, Durango has despatched somebody to the Video games each time. From Juli Furtado again in 1996 to Travis Brown and Ruthie Matthes in 2000 to Todd Wells from 2004 – 2012 and Howard Grotts in 2016, a minimum of one of many riders repping Group USA has been flying the Durango flag as properly.

This yr, in a reasonably unprecedented state of affairs, the U.S. earned the utmost quota for mountain biking in Paris, and is sending 4 athletes to the Video games. Any guesses the place they’re from?

Three of the 4 — Christopher Blevins, Riley Amos, and Savilia Blunk — declare ties to the town on the Animas, with Blevins and Amos born and raised in Durango and Blunk an alumna of Fort Lewis School.

For Blevins, who additionally rode for the U.S. in Tokyo in 2021, competing within the Olympics is as a lot about representing Durango as it’s the US.

“I’ve felt like that my entire life on a mountain bike, actually,” he stated. “Durango is one thing I’m so keen to speak about and so pleased with. It simply feels pure. It feels prefer it’s synonymous with mountain biking within the U.S. at this level and I’m actually pleased with that.”

US Mountain Biking Is to Durango What Durango Is to Devo

As synonymous as Durango is with mountain biking within the U.S., mountain biking in Durango is synonymous with Durango Devo. The youth program, which is occurring 20 years previous, is the place Blevins — and Amos and Grotts — cultivated their love of mountain biking. This system additionally served because the springboard for them to take the trail extra oriented towards racing.

It’s unimaginable to speak about Durango Devo with out speaking about Chad Cheeney. The Fort Lewis grad co-founded Devo in 2006 and has stood firmly on the helm of the non-profit since. Cheeney is partially accountable for one in all Devo’s core tenets: an age-based — quite than ability-based — programming construction.

“We consider that mountain biking expertise and health will come naturally because of being a part of an inclusive neighborhood of people who find themselves enthusiastic about using bikes. Using in an age-based program helps construct key friendships that finally make a profitable rider.”
Any questions concerning the tenability of such a way? Simply ask Blevins and Amos, or Sepp Kuss, who turned professional on the highway, then gained the Vuelta, after almost a decade of mountain biking along with his schoolmates in Durango.

However, of the 1,000 children who go by way of Devo’s ranks yearly, not all of them go on to grow to be Olympians or World Cup winners. Actually, most don’t. However the proportion of riders who do go on to grow to be skilled cyclists outpaces most children’ biking growth applications.

It’s as if any aspiring professional (whether or not they know they’re aspiring or not) who lives in Durango will get a ticket to a particular portal that doesn’t exist anyplace else.

“Durango is admittedly particular as a result of we’re launched to competitors in a very pure, low-pressure natural manner the place we’re actually pushing actually arduous studying these expertise with out actually understanding you’re doing it,” stated Riley Amos, who has swept the UCI U23 World Cup sequence this yr.

Take the Fort Lewis School quick monitor races, for instance.

“Each Wednesday Chad and the Fort Lewis workforce would mark out a brilliant janky quick monitor by way of the bushes with a sack of flour,” Amos stated. “At 16 I’m lining up with the Fort Lewis workforce to do a brief monitor. These guys are actually robust, so racing with them each week I’m studying techniques and getting a very good exercise. Nevertheless it’s executed with such low expectations, everyone seems to be simply cracking up going by way of the bushes.”

Identical goes for Durango’s iconic group highway journey, Tuesday Night time Worlds.

“My first one, I used to be like 17 on a borrowed Ross bike from Devo. I’m exhibiting up with Todd [Wells], Ned [Overend], Payson [McElveen], Howard [Grotts], all these present professionals which might be extraordinarily good. We’re going full gasoline into the wind 20 miles from city, having no concept the way to draft or pull by way of. I’m motivated sheerly by the truth that should you get dropped it’s a great distance again to city.”

As children, athletes like Amos, Grotts, Blevins, and McElveen each knew and didn’t know the extent they have been being uncovered to. Certain, most individuals know who the professionals and Olympians on the town are. However these women and men have been additionally the identical ones that have been buddies with their mother and father, or just good strangers they bumped into on the paths.

You simply have the whole lot you want with out realizing it,” Amos stated. “Simply having so many sources, being surrounded by these professionals, these group rides, these superb trails. And, you’re at altitude.”

How Group Durango Made it to the Olympics

Of all of the mountain bike Olympians bred in Durango, none have come near a podium on the Video games, however that might change this yr (word that Group USA’s fourth rider, Haley Batten, who isn’t from Durango can also be a critical medal contender).

On the boys’s facet, that might be Blevins. Though Amos has had a stand-out yr within the U23 ranks, he’s but to race an elite World Cup. And whereas Blevins hasn’t had essentially the most constant yr when it comes to World Cup outcomes, he believes he has sufficient expertise, each at an Olympic Video games and on the world stage, to point out up when it counts.

“I do know what’s potential now,” he stated. “It’s that straightforward. I do know what’s potential. I do know what I can do and what I can do on my finest day, which is identical as any of these guys on their finest day.”

No matter what occurs on the monitor in Paris, the story of how each Blevins and Amos received there is likely to be the extra necessary one. It started, because it usually does for American athletes, with a factors chase that started in earnest a yr and a half in the past. At that time, the U.S. males’s nations rating hovered round twelfth; if it stayed that manner till Could of 2024, that rating would have earned them one Olympic berth in Paris.

So, with the prodding of the federation, Blevins, Amos, and the US’ different prime factors earner Bjorn Riley, set to work. By the top of the yr, they have been inching nearer to the eighth place — the edge for sending two riders to the Olympics — however they have been a lot too far to get their hopes up.

Then, they went to Arkansas.

Going into the early-April US Professional Cup races in Fayetteville, the U.S. was ranked tenth. After the weekend, they’d climbed the ladder two rungs into eighth. The large leap was in no small half because of the efforts of Amos, who was in a position to race each the U23 and elite XCO races in Arkansas, profitable each of them.

Nonetheless, with almost two extra months left within the Olympics qualifying calendar, it wasn’t assured that the united stateswould ship two males (the ladies had already sealed their two-rider future with a a lot greater rating achieved earlier within the yr).

Till Brazil.

On the Mairiporã World Cup in mid-April, each Blevins and Amos definitively punched their respective tickets to Paris, profitable each the elite and U23 XCO races (with Bjorn Riley aiding because the second-place U23 man).

The outcome was an enormous reduction after what hadn’t essentially been the smoothest of operations.

“We saved the whole lot tight and motivated for the collective good, however tensions have been excessive this spring,” Amos stated. “Chris was pushing, and I used to be actually attempting to determine how and the place to focus. We have been each having to attempt to float so many circles. However once we win collectively we win collectively. Brazil was such an enormous second.”

Amos significantly struggled with the dilemma of what his “employers [trade team] thought was finest versus what the federation thought was finest versus what I believed was finest,” he stated.

In the end, Amos did it for Durango. Or quite, what could have finally swayed him to make the compromises he did for the collective good was the truth that it will be Blevins, a child he regarded as much as and finally grew to become using friends with again house, who can be his peer in Paris.

“That 1000 % needed to do with it,” Amos stated. “It’s uncommon that rivals have such a great relationship typically. Now we have a whole lot of heritage, rising up collectively to an extent. That relationship, our Durango roots, for positive it was a motivating drive. Beneath completely different circumstances, I’m positive individuals would have executed issues in another way.”

“For each of our personal causes, we wished to get two spots,” Blevins stated. “But when it was a matter of somewhat additional work to get one another there, each of us, and Bjorn, we have been gonna do it. Riley and I are a product of the identical circle. The backing we’ve got of understanding what number of Durango Olympians have gone earlier than us, that’s given me confidence my entire life to know what’s potential.”

Watch Durango, er Amos and Blevins, tackle the world through the males’s Olympic mountain bike race on Monday, July 29 at 5:00 a.m. PST.