By Lauren Glendenning (courtesy Vail Daily)
It’s easy to see that the guys who compete in the mountain bike slopestyle have a few screws loose to do this sport — just look around at the start gate and you can see casts, slings, cuts and scrapes on just about everyone.
The guys with enough working body parts are still going for it, though, leaving plenty of big tricks to see for the hundreds of spectators gathered at Friday night’s GoPro Mountain Games finals.
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The top 16 guys from the afternoon qualifier competed, with the lowest qualifiers going first. The guys were judged on their best of two runs, and because of the format, it was a surprise that the fourth guy in Round 1 threw such an impressive run.
That guy was Brayden Barrett-Hay, a 21-year-old rider from Ontario, Canada, who was competing in his first Mountain Games. If you speak bike trick, here’s how it went down: a 360 no-hander on the first feature, a tuck no-hander on the second, followed by a tail whip, then a back flip onto a steep landing, a straight air, a double whip and finally a flip whip.
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The run got him the win, and a $4,000 prize.
Barrett-Hay had a hard day both in practice and in the qualifier. He felt frustrated, but decided he would go for it in the finals.
“I’m just going to crash or I’m going to land it, so the whole way down I was like, ‘Well, I’m going to crash here so I won’t have to worry about it,’ and then I just didn’t end up crashing,” he said. “I was shocked. It was like the best feeling.”
The shock continued throughout the evening for Barrett-Hay at Golden Peak. After the first run, the judges announced he was on top. He couldn’t believe it.
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