Stephan Davoust said he always wanted to finish a big race in a cool style.
Halfway through the USA Cycling Marathon Mountain Bike National Championships in Frederick, Maryland, on Saturday, Davoust was in first place and started to think about a finishing move.
With a big lead, Davoust decided to celebrate the victory by ghost-riding his bike across the finish line.
Jumping on and off his bike is a skill he said he picked up racing cyclocross. He put it to use Saturday after riding 32 miles and climbing about 3,800 feet on the rocky trail.
“It translated to an epic finish line trick,” Davoust said. “As I was coming in, I slowed down, jumped off the back of my bike and pushed it front of me. Then I ran alongside of it.”
Davoust and his bike crossed the finish line first in 2 hours, 42 minutes and 13.20 seconds.
“Going against the top athletes in the country for that specific discipline, to actually get a stars and stripes jersey is huge,” Davoust said. “I’m thankful to everyone who helped get me here.”
Davoust’s teammate on the Giant Factory Off-Road team, Lukas Vrouwenvelder, finished second in 2:45:51.59 while another Durangoan, Payson Mcelveen (Orange Seal Off-road Team) reached the podium with a third-place finish in 2:52:34.83.
“There’s really no one else I’d want to share the podium with than good friends,” Davoust said. “We were all celebrating victories of our own.”
Alexis Skarda of Grand Junction won the Elite Women/Open champion in 3:07:32.56, besting runner-up Rose Grant of Columbia Falls, Montana, by about 32 seconds.
Davoust grew up racing with the Durango Devo and later won two collegiate omnium national titles, a short-track title and several team titles while racing for Fort Lewis College.
Saturday’s victory, however, was his first elite-level national title.
“I’m really pumped on it,” he said. “It’s definitely a big step.”
The championships were held on a 16-mile course, which the bikers rode twice, that featured 1,916 feet of climbing per lap.
“It was a typical east coast trail: nothing that technical, but constant roughness,” Davoust said. “It was all about being as smooth as you can through the trails. There was never time to take a break mentally.”
A lot of competitors got flat tires in the race, he said.
The course also featured a a 2.1-mile descent with 749 feet of elevation loss followed by a 1.9-mile climb with 709 feet of elevation gain.
“Doing the descent, I wanted to be smooth on it so I didn’t puncture (my tire),” Davoust said. “That led into a decisive climb. I knew there was no one decisive point, but I knew that climb (was important), and I wanted to prove dominance early on.”
Near the top of that climb, about a quarter way into the first lap, Davoust made a move and said he could build a small lead and ride his own race after that.
“About 30 minutes in, I was like, ‘I’m going to go for it,’” Davoust said, adding that he didn’t want to let anyone else dictate the pace so he separated early.
Descending, he said, is probably his biggest strength on his bike. He credited Devo for helping him.
“In Devo, we always did a bunch of skill stuff to be a good bike handler,“ Davoust said. ”I had those skills drilled into my head at a young age, and it’s definitely paying off now.“
Davoust, 26, now helps coach Durango Devo when he’s not traveling around the country to race.
The marathon championship, however, tested more than his skills. It tested his overall strength.
“It was definitely a hard 2½ hours,” Davoust said. Usually after a race he said it’s just his legs that are burning, but after the marathon championship his hands and back and arms were all fired up from having to absorb all the bumps.
When he approached the finish line in first and got to do a celebratory ghost ride, however, the pain wasn’t on his mind.
“It was pretty cool. My mechanic is a huge support crutch for me and was standing at the finish, as well as my family and friends. It was pretty awesome,” Davoust said. “They knew it was a big victory for me. It was a really joyous time.”
