Inset Top: Gerry Hurtado, narrator of this event. Middle: Keith
Butterfield and Ray Garza kept the large crowd confused but
interested with freestyle demos between rounds of racing. Bottom:
Scott Wood and Randy Katen touch 'n' go through the chicane.
SPREAD: Caedman Baer sneaks up behind a tightly tucked Tim
Plumarta, and looks for a passing line.
34
MOFOTO
Top, a shuttle to the top of the
hill was much appreciated during
me heated semi-finals.
Mike Goldman
MOFOTO
With the crowd of course comes the
girls. Remember, this is California
beachtown at its finest. The local bronzed
beauties are one thing but the influx of
"Valley Gidgets" from San Jose makes for
one fine day of observation, by both sexes.
Temperatures reaching into the 80's
before noon and 90's by the time the last
race was clocked at 1 p.m. helped out in
this department.
The course for this year's race was the
same as last year's and virtually the same
as every year previous. The start launches
the skaters into a short straightaway,
which, for most of the racers, is used for
8-10 giant pushes leading into the long,
left-handed sweeping turn that empties out
onto Monterey Street and the long
straightaway. Monterey Street is one of the
major thoroughfares leading in and out of
Capitola. So you can imagine what
happens when the police department
closes it off for the better part of a
Saturday. A traffic headache. You can
drive through Capitola any other day of the
year but you can't skate, legally anyway.
So it's a rather small price to pay, plus the
Capitola police love it because they can
style around in dress blue shorts and
Adidas and mingle with the people.
The trick to racing the Classic is to get a
solid push off at the start, establish a good
line through the turn and be ready to whip
out through the hay bales, which force the
riders to the lefthand side of the roadway,
for the flat-out straight dash to the finish
By most downhill skating standards, the
Capitola race is considered one of the
slowest on the downhill circuit. A circuit
which can be loosely defined as consisting
of the Bellevue/College Hill race, which
was held the weekend before the Classic,
and the on-again, off-again Laguna Seca
race (tentatively scheduled for Nov. 21 of
this year). The low speeds, about 38 mph
tops, dictate that racers use tact and
strategy in their approach rather than just a
push like hell, get in a tuck, and go for it
approach. Many times during the
head-to-head eliminations, a skater would
blow past the last hay bale onto the
straightaway with a five or six-board length
lead only to be passed in the last 200 feet
before the finish.
Early morning practice and qualifying
began as the sun hit the pavement. Forty
odd racers from various parts of the
western U.S. and Canada had gathered in
town and were eagerly awaiting a run on
the hill. Conspicuously absent were the
notable likes of Paco Prieto, winner of a
past race, and a strong part of the Seattle
contingency, Byron Miller and Rick Fike,
who had other matters to attend to. At the
end of qualifying, through the list of the top
16 going into head-to-head battle featured
some of the best (from 1-16), John
Hutson, Roy Wakeman, Scott Wood, Marc
Aley, Glen Wood, Roger Hickey, Tim
Piumarta, Beau Brown, Caedman Bear,
Mike Goldman, Perry Fisser, Bob Denike,
Chris Pettyjohn, Randy Katen, Covey
Bauman, and Rick Blackhart.
After a break in the action, which was
livened up by a freestyle demo by Keith
Butterfield and Ray Garcia, the first round
of eliminations began. A quick breakdown: