Squamish bikers are putting in dominant performances on the world stage, with Jackson Goldstone and Teigen Pascual respectively grabbing first and fifth place rankings in recent international competitions.
Over the weekend, Goldstone managed to clinch the win in the Mercedez-Benz UCI Mountain Bike World Cup series, which made a stop in Mont-Sainte-Anne, Que.
The Squamish mountain biking prodigy took the top spot in the downhill junior mens’ category with a time of 4:13.766.
He edged out the second place finisher, British biker Jordan Williams, by 3.8 seconds.
In third was fellow Canadian Bodhi Kuhn, who had a time of 4:20.302.
For Goldstone, it was important to take a win on Canadian soil.
“So stoked to take the win at home in Canada and it was incredible to have @finniles take his first win in elite. Proud to be a Canadian and yesterday is a day I’ll never forget,” he said on Instagram.
He was referring to Whistler rider Finn Iles, who took the win in the elite men’s category of the competition.
Another local, Teigen Pascual, put on an impressive performance at the UCI BMX World Championships in Nantes, France, on July 31.
She was competing in the under-23 category.
The race was a close one, with Pascual taking fifth place with a time of 34.454, which was 1.666 seconds away from the first place winner. The four other racers ahead of her clocked in fractions of a second behind the winning time of 32.788, which belonged to Denmark’s Malene Sorensen.
“I got out of the gate okay to finish 5th in the world,” wrote Pascual in a Facebook post from the Squamish BMX Racing Club. “I was super excited about how I rode and how the weekend went for me. I had a rough start to my season, breaking my collarbone and scapula, but I was able to train my butt off to compete with all these fast girls. The experience was amazing, the French crowd was amazing. I can’t wait to be home to get back to work for the rest of the season.”
