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11-time National Champion Eric Carter and 2008 World Champ Melissa Buhl win
Pro Dual Slalom Crowns

West Dover, Vt. (July 19, 2008)- Reigning national champions and 2008
Olympians Adam Craig (Bend, Ore.) and Mary McConneloug (Chilmark, Mass.)
showed their readiness for Beijing only weeks before the opening of the
Olympic Games winning the men’s and women’s 2008 USA Cycling Mountain Bike
National cross country titles on Saturday. After four consecutive podium
appearances, including his 2007 national title, Craig put on a dominant
performance to take his second consecutive Stars-and-Stripes jersey in the
pro men’s cross country race at Southern Vermont’s Mount Snow Resort, while
McConneloug defended her national title by less than a wheel over fellow
2008 Olympian Georgia Gould (Fort Collins, Colo.).

Craig has a history of strong performances in national championship races.
Just missing a national title with a second-place finish in the first
single-day national championship in 2004, Craig followed up that performance
with a third-place effort in 2005 and a fifth-place effort in 2006 before
taking the title on the Mount Snow course last season. The newly named 2008
Olympian looks to be on good form heading into the Aug 23 Olympic mountain
bike race in Beijing.

“This one is better than last year,” said New England native Adam Craig.
“It’s always hard when you have a target on your back. This race was good
prep as it offers some good power work riding up steep hills like we’re
going to have to do in Beijing.”

Competing over four laps of a five-mile circuit, Craig took the lead from
the gun and held off the strong 58-rider men’s pro field to win the title in
1:43:39. At the conclusion of the first lap, Craig had opened up a more than
one minute gap on his closest competition, including the top-rated American
in the World Cup standings and fellow Olympian Todd Wells (Durango, Colo.)
and last year’s national championship silver-medalist Jeremiah Bishop
(Harrisonburg, Va.). Craig continued to ride strong finishing 1:37 ahead of
silver medalist Ryan Trebon (Bend, Ore.) and more than two minutes in front
of a surging Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Boulder, Colo.) who took third place.
Carl Decker (Bend, Ore.) and Sam Schultz (Colorado Springs, Colo.) rounded
out the podium finishers.

McConneloug repeated her Stars-and-Stripes performance from a year ago,
outsprinting Gould to the line by less than a second as the two Olympians
showed their dominance in Saturday’s pro women’s cross country contest. With
her victory McConneloug becomes the first woman to win back-to-back national
titles since the single day national championship format was adopted in
2004.

Finding herself initially off the pace in the 15-mile contest, McConneloug
quickly closed the gap on the early leaders to force a sprint to the finish
with Olympic teammate Gould. With only hundredths of a second separating the
two, McConneloug’s winning time of 1:33:07 was just enough to earn her a
third Stars-and-Stripes jersey. Her first title came in 2005 in Mammoth
Lakes, Calif. and the most recent on the same course in last year’s
competition.

“I was really conservative on the first lap. I didn’t want to go down,
that’s when she passed me,” explained McConneloug. “We were riding together
the whole race. Every climb I’d pass her and on the descents she’d pass me.
I knew I needed to catch her on the final climb and I did.”

That final pass by McConneloug set up one of the most exciting pro cross
country finishes in the short history of these national championships as the
pair sprinted down the final straight to give the crowd a near photo finish.

Cyclo-cross champion Katie Compton (Colorado Springs, Colo.) gunned it out
of the start, but the pair of Olympians kept their composure and with one
lap of the three-lap affair complete Gould and McConneloug established a
strong lead over the 38-rider field. Heading into the final lap McConneloug
found herself nearly 20 seconds off Gould’s leading pace with Heather
Irmiger (Boulder, Colo.), Willow Koerber (Asheville, N.C.) and Leah Davison
(Jericho, Vt.) in third, fourth and fifth, over a minute behind. McConneloug
closed that gap on the final five-mile loop earning her not only a fourth
overall national cross country title, winning the overall points
classification in the now-defunct National Championship Series in 2003, but
also posting her fourth win in as many tries on the Mount Snow course.

Irmiger slowed her pace on the final loop, but was able to improve on last
year’s fourth-place-finish, holding onto the bronze, 3:02 down. With the
crowd cheering her through the woods on the backside of the course, hometown
hero Davison was able to surge into fourth place while Koerber, in her first
contest since the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in June, rounded out
the top five, 5:48 back.

In the other major pro event on Saturday, 38 year-old Eric Carter (Temecula,
Calif.) descended to his 11th national title in the men’s dual slalom, while
2008 World Champ Melissa Buhl (Chandler, Ariz.) captured the women’s crown.
Carter outrode eighth-seeded Geritt Beytagh (Fletcher, N.C.), recent overall
winner of Mount Snow’s SoBee Energy Downhill and Dual Slalom Series
presented by e.thirteen, in men’s final. Number-one-seeded Buhl took out the
number-two-seeded Kathy Pruitt (Lake Almanor, Calif.) in the women’s final.

In the consolation rounds, 12th-seeded Chris Van Dine (Park City, Utah) won
the bronze medal over Ross Milan (Arvada, Colo.) in the men’s category,
while Darian Harvey (Durango,Colo.) beat Jessica Vogt (Boulder, Colo.) in
the women’s division.

In other open competition on Saturday, Travis Livermon (Winterville, N.C.)
and Betsy Shogren (Morgantown, W.Va.) earned national titles in the men’s
and women’s singlespeed event. Also,Mike Steidley (New Haven, Conn.) and
Brian Yezierski (Middleton, Conn.) won the stock and modified trials
competitions respectively.

The 2008 USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships will conclude on
Sunday as both the pro men’s and women’s downhill and the men’s and women’s
pro short track national championships highlight the schedule.

Several expert national titles were also awarded in various cross country
and downhill divisions on Saturday.