Rough Riders Local Mountain Bikers Are Competitive Weekend Warriors

Team MacKay knows precision.

In mountain biking, misjudging a jump by 6 inches means flying over handlebars toward scrapes, bruises and broken bones.

For the eight-member team, mountain biking means navigating logs, avoiding trees and landing 5-foot drops. Speeds can reach 20 mph.

The sport has grown in popularity in the past decade and Team MacKay has ridden to the top of the regional scene. Several team members are leading the WIM (Washington, Idaho, Montana) race series in their age categories. Bruce Szember won a recent state championship held in north Spokane at Beacon Hill.

“We kind of got a bit of a home-court advantage because that’s where we train,” said Szember.

Two different types of racing are sponsored at a typical mountain-biking event. One is cross-country, which is usually 25-35 miles of narrow single-track and anywhere between 3,000-5,000 feet of vertical climbing.

Downhill focuses on speed more than endurance. A 2-1/2-mile course is navigated in as many minutes. To train, 29-year-old Mike Russert said he weight trains to failure - meaning he lifts until the weight becomes too heavy for his body to handle.

To train for the cross-country race, Kevin Schultz, a 39-year-old who works as a grade-school teacher at St. Paschal’s, rides 150-200 miles each week, half of those off road.

He often bikes from his home in downtown Spokane to work each day.

His connection to the team is that he taught Matt MacKay, a 17-year-old at Gonzaga Prep. Matt is the son of Mike MacKay, owner of MacKay Manufacturing, which sponsors the team. Everyone on the team has some connection to the company.

Five of the team members work for MacKay, which specializes in tiny, custom-made machine parts for the electronics and medical industries. The company, located in the Valley, has more than $10 million in annual sales.

Sponsorship has meant more than slapping a team name on racing jerseys. The company provides a trailer and truck to haul the bikes, $500 a racing season to replace broken bike parts and entry fees for the races.

Mike MacKay became interested in starting a team after his son Matt got involved in racing several years ago.

“We started going to races and really liked what we saw and thought it was a good influence. Bikers tend to look bizarre, but they’re all really nice people.”

He looked around his company and realized several talented mountain bikers work for him.

A lot of bike parts are made with the same precision machines MacKay uses to make its parts. Szember, the quality control manager at MacKay, makes sure the bike parts meet specs to the millimeter.

“We’re used to making pretty technical things. Bikes are technical things,” Szember said.

Mountain bikes have become the No. 1 type of bike sold in the United States. The sport has grown as more and more people have begun recreating on mountain bikes, said Wendy Zupan, a local race organizer.

“We’re seeing a resurgence in mountain biking, not just competitive racing but as recreation. They all feed on each other,” Zupan said.

This year, the sport has begun taking off again regionally. An additional 100 competitors show up at each event. A typical weekend will draw 600 racers of all ages.

Team MacKay sponsors a kids’ race at each WIM event. Race organizers say they try to keep the regional competitions family-oriented.

While enthusiasts resist labeling mountain biking as an extreme sport, it has its dangerous side.

Matt MacKay saw that side in 1997. He overshot a landing on a downhill race and fell on his head, breaking his helmet in four places. He had three compression fractures in his back and broke a piece of his neck.

He still has a slight stoop from the injury, which doctors have told him he’ll have for the rest of his life.

In 1999, he won the WIM series in his age group. But this season he’s trying to decide whether to continue with the sport.

His father said he’d rather Matt not race.

“I recognize the sport is dangerous,” Mike MacKay said. “We haven’t been to a race where an ambulance didn’t haul someone away. These people break collar bones like you change shoes.”

At the Beacon Hill race, a bike snapped in half from the impact of a landing.

“Lately a lot of people have been going away in ambulances,” Szember said.

Many people just starting in the sport think if they spend $5,000 for a full-suspension bicycle, they can handle technical downhill courses. They often ride out of control.

“We’ve been doing this for long enough that it’s very calculated,” Szember said.

The team will get a chance to compete at the national competition this summer. The race will be held at Crystal Mountain ski resort, 65 miles southeast of Seattle, in August.

Nationals is a four-day carnival with bike manufacturers showing off their latest technologies.

“I’ll watch the pros and be humbled,” said Schultz. “We’ll score some pretty neat (bike) parts and stickers.”

“The bottom line is we’re all out to have fun. We’re all weekend warriors,” Szember said.