Last Chance! National Spring

Duke City BMX, home of the 2019 USA BMX Spring Nationals caused quite a stir during late December when they posted some early footage of their most recent track rebuild. The clip showed local stars, Kalvin Davis and Tomas Fernandez, jumping through the deep and steep third and fourth straightaways. Comments ranged from why isn’t every track like this to downright fearfulness. In the end, day one of the national had 184 motos of high altitude action.

Friday night was the second and final UCI world qualifier and final chance for riders to punch their ticket for Team USA. The riders took to the technical track fairly well but as we saw in Florida, the 12 and under classes didn’t have anyone dominating as many do under normal clipped-in race conditions. With the deadline looming to petition for a spot on the team, we shall soon know who all will be representing the USA this July.

As Pro practice concluded all eyes were on the UCI official, the pro section and his tape measure. In the end, the section was deemed to not be to UCI specs which meant that the Junior and Elite classes could not use them during their races. This ruling would not apply to any USA BMX classes, such as A pro.

Speaking of A Pro, another Australian would come out on top for day one. Throdwns Tyler Smith would get a healthy holeshot and the crispy benjamin courtesy of Answer BMX but opted to go left and skip the pro section. This allowed Fernandez and DK’s Kyle Hill to go from fourth and fifth, to first and second. Fernandez set up for the final turn just wide enough to allow Hill to manual his way inside of the third turn, give Tomas a bump and ride on to victory. Tyler Faoro would grab the three spot.

On day two it was another holeshot for Tyler Smith but the other local star Kalvin Davis was languishing right behind him out of turn one. Smith again went left, Davis went right over the big pro set and overtook the lead. Day one winner, Kyle Hill, was right behind the Supercross pro through the pro section. As they hit turn two Smith would now find himself in fourth place as Tyler Faoro also moved past the Throdwn pro. Things would get single file after that and the podium would finish up in the same order.