4-10-07 // Online Exclusive: Giant Steps

The Giant bikes are tuned up and ready to race, but how about the riders? Alan L. Davis

The 2007 Giant mountain bike team assembled for a team camp at the company’s headquarters in Newbury Park, California, this week. With a blend of new and familiar faces, Giant’s cross-country and gravity racers soaked up some California sunshine, tore up the local trails, rubbed elbows with the staff at Giant USA, and dialed in new equipment during the days leading up to the Sea Otter Classic.

Adam Craig returns to lead Giant’s cross-country squad, which also includes Team Giant veteran Carl Decker and newcomer Kelli Emmett, who rode for Ford last year. Giant’s 2007 gravity-racing contingent consists of Aussies Jared Rando and Amiel Cavalier, who will focus on the NORBA circuit and North American World Cups.

While Rando and Cavalier are coming off the Australian summer racing season (Cavalier won the 2006-2007 Aussie downhill series), Craig and Emmett are just starting to ramp up for an international assault that includes a full World Cup schedule. It’s all about the 2008 Olympics for these two, and both have already started accumulating valuable UCI points to help the U.S. secure the maximum number of starts in Beijing.

Before leading us on a local ride that’s commonly referred to by Giant employees as “The Beer Loop,” Craig sat down with Bike to discuss a variety of topics including what it’s like to race in South America, why he prefers World Cups over NORBA races and why he forewent his usual off-season globe-trotting adventures this year.

Amiel, Jared, Kelli, Adam, and Carl Alan L. Davis

This is the team introduction, but your season’s already underway. How’s it going so far?

I went down to Argentina a couple weeks ago for the Pan Ams, and then Kelli and I went to Puerto Rico and then the NORBA race in Arizona. So yeah, we’ve done a fair bit of racing for this early in the season. Argentina was the first race effort of the year for me, and that was a fun race. It’s in a beautiful area, the Seven Lakes region of northern Patagonia, right on the Chilean border. It was a stunning area, and the course was rad—100 percent dirt bike singletrack, which is pretty much the antithesis of the normal Pan Am type course.

Can you describe how a race like that differs from, say, a NORBA race?

Usually with those courses that are just up and down and not technically demanding at all, you’ll be like, ‘I’m feeling decent, but I’m in ninth place with a bunch of random dudes in front of me. [In Argentina] there was a Colombian guy who was riding fast up the first climb, which is par for the course, and then as soon as we rode the first five-minute downhill, it was the five American usual suspects who ride singletrack all the time and know how to do it. It was in a teeny little village with a lot of people around. There were 40-odd guys in the elite race, but there were also 40-odd guys in the U-23 race, so there are definitely some young folks that are coming up down there.

How was your winter training? No big paddling adventures in China this year?

No, I was kind of able to extrapolate the fact that I spent a month in China freezing to death basically and getting sick [last off-season], and when I got home from that trip and started to try and train I was basically tired for the next 10 months. I wouldn’t trade having gone over there for the world, but I have enough respect for my situation here to not do that to myself again. It was nice, the weather was good in Bend this year, so I got lots of good training in. I didn’t leave Bend for the better part of four months this winter. I stayed home, skied a bunch and did a bunch of training. It was the first time since high school that I’ve done that. I’m always running around doing something, so it was kind of nice to be grounded.