Press and Media Center

Legends Lead the Way at Beaver Creek

The level of competition at the XTERRA Mountain Championship is off the charts with more than a dozen current and past age group national and world champions on the start list including Patrick Valentine, John Klish, Jason Michalak, Henry Reed, Danielle Kehoe, Jaime Brede, Tamara Donelson, Cindi Toepel, Barbara Peterson, Luisa Bryce, Libby Harrow, Suzie Snyder, Josiah Middaugh, Emma Garrard, and Matt Boobar.

More than a handful of those listed above have since turned pro and no doubt  a handful of age groupers in Saturday’s race will eventually turn pro themselves.

For such an experienced and talented collection of racers it’s only appropriate that the race director is one of the greatest multisport athletes of all-time (Mike Kloser), the executive in charge of bringing the race to Beaver Creek is a champion age-group competitor himself (Peter Dann), and the guy who helped design the course is the best XTERRA athlete in America (Josiah Middaugh).

Kloser (read his awe-inspiring bio here) was a key ingredient in XTERRA’s success and part of the back-bone of the sport as one of the original racers from the inaugural 1996 Maui World Championship.  The mountain bike Hall-of-Famer is a catalyst to great things and has brought the local community here in Avon and Vail together to make the Mountain Championship a world-class event.

A perfect example of this was found at the Beaver Creek Rodeo on Thursday night, where the fearless bull riders could be seen wearing XTERRA race numbers provided by Kloser as a way to support the event and the athletes in their community.

Dann (pictured right), the executive Vice President for East West Resorts, started racing XTERRA more than a decade ago and just last year won the 55-59 division here at the Mountain Championship (defeating the current national champ in the process).  Last October Dann came just two minutes short of winning an XTERRA World Title in Maui. It was his vision and persistence that brought the Mountain Championship to Beaver Creek Resort.

Middaugh, who is not just an XTERRA star but an all-season standout with Winter Tri, Snowshoe, Teva Games, Quad Tri, and other titles to his credit, helped Kloser design the course.  He’s a climbing specialist, and the course certainly reflects that by gaining 2,000 vertical feet in the first five miles and just about 5,000 feet on the day.  

For certain, Saturday’s race is the ultimate XTERRA mountain challenge assembled by an all-star cast of producers and tackled by an amazing line-up of competitors and If you win here, you’re legit.