These past few weekends have really tested the riders’ abilities on tracks that featured a variety of new and unusual obstacles.

To add salt to the wound, they’ve also been made of fairly soft soil and ended up with deeply rutted jump faces and cupped-out whoop sections. St. Louis was no different, with a couple of truly challenging obstacles that most riders never did conquer.

The whoops were one of those places, spaced about one third further apart than usual and not particularly deep; everyone was struggling in them all night.

 “Clumsy” and “awkward” were words being used to describe them all day, and it seemed to fit. There were also a few pretty unusual doubles thrown into the mix, which featured landings higher than the take-offs.  Not really step-ups as step-overs, they seemed to be easy to screw-up, and it happened many times.