Race Report: 2025 Downieville Classic, Pro Men
Race: 2025 Downieville Classic, Pro Men
Date: August 8-9, 2025
AVRT racers: Jon Wells
Top Result: Jon Wells, 26th of 38 in XC
XC Course: 27 mile, net downhill, XC mountain bike race. It starts with ~1 hour climb and then goes into a rolling section on top followed by a long, technical 5k foot descent.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/15403985599
Nutrition: 2L camel back with ~220g of malto & gatorade mix plus a couple gels
Race Recap:
Downieville Classic is a 2 day mtb race where you must race an XC race on saturday and downhill race on sunday, all on the same bike. It gets called the all mountain world championships and is really a downcountry race exemplified. The descent is pretty chunky throughout and gets technical at times too.
The XC race on day 1 is net downhill but still starts with about an hour of climbing straight out of town. I immediately let the group go and settled into my target HR (170bpm) for the climb. A lot of guys go out too hard but I don’t think staying with the group is necessary in this type of terrain. The climbing plan paid off and I picked off lots of fast starters to finish the climb inside the top 20 in a pretty stacked pro field.
The course quickly becomes more technical over the top, first on some small rolling climbs and then it eventually plunges downhill for almost an hour. I felt strong and confident through the rollers and was still moving forwards through people. But once we hit the DH I started to slide back. Normally in an XC race I’m among the faster descenders, but downieville selects for guys who send it hard on the DH. I was passed by probably 10 guys over the course of the descent. Eventually, the descent gets pretty flat at the bottom and I was able to get back on the gas to stop the bleeding. I ended up in 26th place with a time of 2 hours 22 min, which was well under my goal of 2.5 hours!
DH Top Result: Jon Wells, 26th in DH (25th overall)
DH Course: 14 mile downhill race. A lot of the descent is shared with saturday but there are a few extra technical sections like the infamous waterfall section
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/15416429108
Nutrition: 1L in camelback with 110g calories, drank between my warmup and race.
Race Recap:
The downhill race at Downieville has almost 5,000 feet of descent and took the winners 45 minutes to complete. It is setup like a timetrial, where everyone starts a minute apart. It is not very steep so there is plenty of pedalling throughout. There is a proper ~3minute climb toward the bottom third of the course and then the last few miles are quite flat and require a lot of effort. I took a longer warmup and found some singletrack to rip on beforehand as suggested by some downieville vets, which I think was a smart move.
Even with my longer warmup and riding some trails, I was still pretty antsy out of the gate and blew through a couple early corners which cost me time. I rode as fast as I felt comfortable and didn’t take a crazy amount of risks, given I wasn’t anywhere near the top of the leaderboard. I hit the pedally sections with everything I had left in my legs. I was faster in all of the shared sections of single track in the shorter Sunday race, as I would have hoped.
I finished in 55 minutes and some change, which was my goal time for the descent. I got passed by 3 or 4 guys on the way down and only caught guys who had crashed so I didn’t think my time was all that impressive (spoiler: it wasn’t). I was in the pack of finishing times, but one of the last guys who didn’t crash or have a mechanical. My time was good for 26th on the day, which combined with the day before left me 25th overall in the pro field. The results are calculated as a points based omnium, which really favors strong DH riders over XC nerds.
Overall, its a super fun race weekend, with lots of extra activities on Saturday afternoon like the bike jump into the river and party in town. I would definitely go back, and also it is a good mtb goal to have on the calendar to get me out riding on dirt more.
-Jon
