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Stefanie McDaniel showers Cooper Ott and Lia Westermann on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019, with champagne during the BME finals award ceremony in Snowmass Base Village. Lauren Bingham, right, placed fifth in the women’s pro division for the whole BME race series, McDaniel placed third, Westermann placed second and Ott placed first. Zephyr Sylvester placed fourth overall but was not present at the awards ceremony.
Maddie Vincent/The Aspen Times
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Tanner Spung, 1, rides her strider bike on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019, outside of The Collective building in Snowmass Base Village. While adults were taking on the BME Finals, toddlers like Spung were racing strider bikes.
Maddie Vincent/The Aspen Times
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Mountain bikers gather for the Big Mountain Enduro series on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2019, in Snowmass Base Village.
Maddie Vincent/The Aspen Times
The Big Mountain Enduro Aspen Snowmass races, and final BME competitions of the season, concluded Sunday after two days of racing in Snowmass and Aspen.
“Let’s give a big round of applause to all of the racers,” a BME announcer said at the awards ceremony from Snowmass Base Village. “I love this series. It’s such a great community to be a part of.”
Starting with the winners of the weekend races and ending with the overall champions of the summer-long BME series, which consists of five races across the western U.S., dozens of athletes stepped up to the podium Sunday evening to be recognized.
Each BME race features courses with timed downhill stages coupled with non-timed traverses between the stages. The descent times are added up for an overall time and score for the series.
Some of this year’s standouts included Roaring Fork Valley locals Erik Obermeyer, winner of the weekend BME race in the amateur men’s 21 to 39 division, and Megan Cerise, the weekend winner in the amateur women’s 21 to 39 division.
Both amateurs won all six stages of the weekend, which included riding on the Valhalla, Animal Crackers and Sam’s Knobs trails on Saturday, along with the Powerline, Aspen Mountain and Banzai trails on Sunday.
At the pro level for both the weekend and overall enduro series, many of the same racers took to the podium, including Cooper Ott, 27, of Gunnison.
After being showered with champagne from her teammates and competitors, Ott acknowledged it was a privilege to take part in such tight racing.
“It was a great weekend and this definitely wasn’t handed to me,” Ott said. “It was hard work.”
Ott, who also won the overall women’s pro title last season with a finish in Snowmass, won three of the five BME races this summer. She finished with 1,550 points to hold off runner-up Lia Westermann (1,420) and third-place finisher Stefanie McDaniel (1,340) for the season’s crown. Ott and Westermann went 1-2 in the Snowmass stop, with each woman winning exactly half the stages. Ott took the Snowmass win by less than a second.
Ott explained that she didn’t “seal the deal” her first day of racing, putting the pressure on her second-half performance. Westermann won two of the three stages Sunday.
A big wreck Sunday during Stage 5 on Aspen Mountain made Ott rethink taking on the final stage of the race, but she came back to win both the weekend and the overall BME series.
“Going downhill is just as hard as going up,” Ott said, laughing. “It was super fun to hit the descents in my sister hometown.”
California’s Evan Geankoplis held on to win the overall BME title for the pro men despite not competing this weekend. His 1,260 points held off season runner-up Scott Countryman (1,110) and third-place finisher Quinn Reece (1,100).
Carson Lange of Texas won the pro men’s race in Snowmass to finish second in the overall season standings behind Geankoplis. Countryman was third.