{"id":26440,"date":"2024-07-27T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T23:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durangos-riley-amos-has-special-something-when-overlooked\/"},"modified":"2024-07-27T23:30:00","modified_gmt":"2024-07-27T23:30:00","slug":"durangos-riley-amos-has-special-something-when-overlooked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durangos-riley-amos-has-special-something-when-overlooked\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango\u2019s Riley Amos has \u2018special something\u2019 when overlooked"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Riley
Riley Amos crosses the finish line as the winner of the men's U-23 cross-country Olympic race at the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup in Val di Sole, Trentino, Italy, on Sunday. (Photo by Ross Bell)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

PARIS \u2013 Todd Wells can\u2019t quite put a fine point on what makes mountain bike racers successful. He just knows it when he sees it. They have a certain \u201cje ne sais quoi.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is sort of fitting that the phrase is French, considering Wells believes Durango\u2019s Riley Amos \u2013 who is about to compete in the 2024 Olympic Games \u2013 has it in spades.<\/p>\n

Wells should know, especially when it comes to Olympics-caliber talent. In addition to having captured 15 national titles during his pro career, he also competed in three Summer Games.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Durango, we have all sorts of amazing riders. We have no shortage,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have group rides, we have local races, the college constantly brings new, young cycling enthusiasts \u2026 and everybody is good, or pretty good. But a lot of times doesn\u2019t translate in the races. So you might be on a ride with somebody on the weekend or the group ride and you\u2019re like, \u2018God, this guy or girl is just killing it.\u2019 And then you get to the race and you\u2019re like, \u2018Well, what happened?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to race is a big skill, and I\u2019m not sure that is something you teach,\u201d he said. \u201cSome people can do it, and some people can\u2019t. And for Riley, he\u2019s always been a great racer.\u201d<\/p>\n

At age 22, Amos is the fourth youngest of the 36 racers who will line up for Monday\u2019s Olympic race at Elancourt Hill, about 30 miles southwest of the Paris city center (the youngest is Romano Puentener, 20, of Liechtenstein). That doesn\u2019t make him an underdog, however.<\/p>\n

He leads the UCI\u2019s U23 World Cup rankings \u2013 going undefeated in the Olympic distance and winning seven of eight races overall \u2013 and claimed both the short-track and Olympic-distance Pan American Championships earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Plus, as Wells noted, Amos has that special something.<\/p>\n

Amos seems especially good at turning it on in moments where he\u2019s overlooked.<\/p>\n

Case in point: In 2021, with just two U23 World Cup starts under his elastic waistband, he won the race in Leogang, Austria. It was the first ever U23 World Cup victory by an American.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the moment I think you could say the rest is history,\u201d Amos told Olympics.com. \u201cIt kicked off my pro career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amos got his start with Durango Devo. The program helps children fall in love with two-wheeled transportation and was the petri dish for another Paris 2024 racer: Christopher Blevins, who thinks his sister coached Amos on Devo for a while.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a racing team, though, and it wasn\u2019t long before Amos wanted a bigger adrenaline rush than bicycle backpacking trips typically offer.<\/p>\n

In 2017, he reached out to Wells, who had recently retired and would at times accompany the group on rides.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was pretty raw, but very eager,\u201d Wells said. \u201cLike he wanted to do everything he could, you know? He had made up his mind: he wanted to be a bike racer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essentially, he already was. He just had to do a little fine tuning.<\/p>\n

Wells said he took a gradual approach to getting Amos in racing shape to avoid burnout and injury. With modesty, Wells acknowledged the approach worked. Amos won his first UCI race, a Junior Series event at Utah\u2019s Soldier Hollow when he was 16. Then he won another. He followed that performance with a sweep of the short-track and cross-country races in the 16-and-under category at the national championships.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody likes to see a steady progression up and to the right on a chart, right? We just want to improve as time goes on. And most times, it\u2019s pretty lumpy,\u201d Wells said. \u201cYou have some improvements and some setbacks. But for Riley, of course he\u2019s had his improvements and setbacks. But his chart, if you were to look at it over time, would be fairly steady up and to the right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amos was quickly added to the roster of the Bear National Team, a program co-founded by Julia Vuolich that supports promising young racers with equipment, coaching and travel. Soon, he was wheeling up to the starting line in his first World Championship as part of the USA\u2019s relay team.<\/p>\n

The squad also included Tokyo Olympians Haley Batten and Blevins, as well as Keegan Swenson, who now dominates the gravel bike circuit, and Kate Courtney, whose gold at the 2018 World Championships ended a nearly decadelong drought for the Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to line up on a team with these superstars,\u201d Amos said with awe.<\/p>\n

Not one to get lost in the moment, he helped the team achieve a silver medal.<\/p>\n

Amos will again find himself among superstars on Monday in a sport where no U.S. man has ever won a medal. UCI World Cup cross country leader Victor Koretzky will be trying to win on his home soil, while Switzerland\u2019s two entrants will be Nino Schurter and Mathias Fluckiger, who rank second and third, respectively. Blevins ranks 11th, but after placing 14th in Tokyo, is considered among the favorites.<\/p>\n

Given his inexperience, Amos is not often included in conversations about medal contenders. Still, both Wells and USA Cycling Mountain Biking Director Alec Pasqualina believe other competitors would be foolish to overlook him.<\/p>\n

\u201c(These Olympics are) experiential. He\u2019s younger. But still, with the way that he\u2019s riding and racing, it\u2019s extremely impressive this year,\u201d Pasqualina said. \u201cI think he\u2019s an absolute outside contender.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a dangerous place to be when you\u2019re this talented and you haven\u2019t built pressure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

If Amos translates his talent into a medal in Paris, they\u2019ll call him something that\u2019s the same in both French and English: champion.<\/p>\n

Julie Jag is a former sports reporter for The Durango Herald and now works at the Salt Lake Tribune. She is covering the Summer Olympics from Paris<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cyclist looks to use that to his advantage at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[657,950,28,977,346,2505],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-26440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cycling","tag-durango","tag-headlines","tag-mountain-biking","tag-sports","tag-summer-olympics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26440"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=26440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}