Twenty-four hundred riders have descended on the Roanoke Valley this week for the Endurance Mountain Bike National Championships.
Roanoke is in year two of a three-year partnership with USA Cycling to host the Endurance Mountain Bike National Championships. They started Sunday with a marathon event at Carvins Cove and continue through this weekend.
Gordon Wadsworth stepped away from his job as the race's technical director to compete and win his tenth national championship during the marathon event Sunday.
"We have this glut of options in the Roanoke Valley, almost paralyzing because we have so many options," Wadsworth says. "We settled on marathon racing at Carvins Cove. Jumping here to downtown Roanoke, we have Elmwood Park. Logistically very complex for being barely over a kilometer track. And then at the end of the week, we move over Roanoke County's Explore Park, which is our cross-country Olympic [course]."
Visit Virginia's Blue Ridge, the metro area's tourism agency, estimates last year's races generated $2.6 million dollars in economic impact. And this year's event is a stretched out over a few more days, likely boosting that.
Last Friday, riders were already arriving and had packed out Carvins Cove Bennett Springs parking lot.
Christina Gokey-Smith traveled from Denton, Texas, to represent the team she founded, the all-female Impact Racing Team. She'd stepped away from the sport a few years ago, but, "you can't really retire, you know," says Gokey-Smith. "This is just a sport for life and longevity."
Alfonso Hecht, originally from Mexico, came to Roanoke from Greensburg, Kentucky. He was racing as an amateur but hoped to finish well enough to move up to pro.
"My background is downhill, so I like hitting big stuff, and jumps, and going fast," Hecht says.
Races continue this week at Elmwood Park before heading to Explore Park this weekend.
