The mountain biking teams best and worst trails to ride

Angie L. Harker

Tate Archibald, Writer
October 3, 2022

First off, the Richfield trails are completely different from the Mantua trails. (Pronounced Man-away) The Richfield course only gains about four hundred feet of climbing per lap. On the contrary, the Mantua course gains about 550 feet of climbing per lap. Big difference, right?
The Richfield course is flat and dusty with large sections of wide trail called “double track” for passing. But the Mantua only has about .5 of a mile for passing and the rest goes to thinner, longer trails called “single track”. The Mantua trail is also a lot smoother and not as dusty as Richfield. Again, big differences between the two courses.
“The climb at Mantua is really steep but in the end the race itself will end up being really fast.”said Jackson Chapman, A sophomore at Davis this year.
“The climb at Mantua is very steep and the finish line is going downhill instead of flat so there will
be lots of crashes at the end.” said Luke Wilden.
What Luke says about the finish is interesting. Most people would think it would be nice for the finish to be downhill so you can go fast. But the ending is the part of the race where everybody pushes as hard as they can and they try to pass people, and when there is a lot of passing happening in a small space going extremely fast, there will be a couple crashes guaranteed.
“The race is a lot smoother and less dusty.” said Harvey Robbins.
That was one of the main complaints of Richfield. The dust. If you had any amount of asthma or other breathing problems, it would be a bad race for you.
“The next race at Mantua will be a lot less dusty unlike Richfield. It will also be a lot smoother and faster than Richfield.” said Robbins.
It seems the main consensus is that the upcoming Mantua race will be a lot less dusty than Richfield. A big thing in a lot of the answers from the riders was that the race will be a lot faster and less dusty than Richfield.
After pre-riding the race course, I heard quite a lot of people talking about this course. A lot of mixed opinions. Some people said that they were super excited for the race, and a lot of people said just the opposite, saying that the race would be horrible. I personally think that the race will be a bit of both, some really good parts, and some bad parts.