{"id":38733,"date":"2022-08-26T00:35:14","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T06:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durangoans-lead-team-usa-relay-to-podium\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:46:12","slug":"durangoans-lead-team-usa-relay-to-podium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durangoans-lead-team-usa-relay-to-podium\/","title":{"rendered":"Durangoans lead Team USA relay to podium"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Team
Team USA mountain bikers show off the bronze medals they won during the cross-country Olympics team relay at the world championships on Wednesday in Les Gets, France. The team included Durangoans Bailey Cioppa, second from left, Christopher Blevins, second from right, and Riley Amos, right. (Bailey Cioppa\/Instagram)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The 2022 UCI mountain bike world championships got underway Wednesday in Les Gets, France, with the cross-country team relay. Cyclists from Durango made up half the team and led Team USA on to the podium with a third-place finish.<\/p>\n

Durangoans Christopher Blevins, Riley Amos and Bailey Cioppa were joined by Haley Batten, Madigen Munro and Cayden Parker on the relay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team had a consistent, good effort from start to finish, and it was good enough for the last step of the box,\u201d Amos posted on Instagram. \u201cLove this event and thankful for the trust by USA Cycling for my first race back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amos broke his collar bone training before the national championships in July, but had surgery to repair the injury and healed enough to race in the championships.<\/p>\n

Switzerland won the relay championship in 1 hour, 17 minutes and 14 seconds. Italy placed second, six seconds back, and the USA finished third out of the 18 teams that started the race in 1:17:28, just 14 seconds off Switzerland\u2019s pace.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, downhill qualification took place as well as the junior cross-country Olympic races. \u201cNerves have turned to excitement, can\u2019t wait for xco tomorrow afternoon,\u201d Cioppa posted after the relay. In a different post, she said, \u201cSo excited to put the stars and stripes back on for my last junior races.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the junior women\u2019s cross-country Olympic race on Thursday, Cioppa led the USA and nearly reached the podium again. Cioppa placed seventh in the race, finishing 3:56 after the winner, Monique Halter of Switzerland, who crossed first in 59:37.<\/p>\n

Fellow Durangoan, Lauren Aggeler, finished 21st (+7:08) in the junior race.<\/p>\n

The world championships will continue Friday, Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the elite cross-country short track championships will take place, which Blevins won last year, as well as the E-mountain bike races.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been quite an honor and a whole lot of fun racing in the stripes this past year. Tomorrow we fight for them again in XCC,\u201d Blevins posted Thursday on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Sofia Gomez Villafane, a former Fort Lewis College rider, will compete in the women\u2019s elite e-bike race for Argentina.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst e-bike race tomorrow and nonetheless at the World Champs,\u201d Villafane posted. \u201cThe course here is wild: some really technical climbs, massive log hops, and lots of rock gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Savilia Blunk is on the start list for the elite short track and cross-country Olympic races. The men\u2019s short track field features 63 riders, and the women\u2019s has 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhelp, I emptied the \u2018tank\u2019 a little sooner than expected,\u201d Blunk posted. \u201cFinally recovered from some food poisoning over the weekend and ready to ease carefully into a beautiful week at World Champs. Feeling like myself again and the vibes are high with (Orange Seal Off Road Team) and USA Cycling.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the junior and elite downhill championships will take place.<\/p>\n

The world championships will then wrap up with the U23 and elite cross-country Olympic races on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnergy is high, legs are open, and now full focus for Sunday,\u201d Amos posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

finishes third<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,657,950,977,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-cycling","tag-durango","tag-mountain-biking","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38733","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=38733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84110,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38733\/revisions\/84110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38733"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}