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AMAINATC National Championship Trials Series Rounds 9-10: Rocky Mountain Trials Association THE BELGIAN PUTS FINAL TOUCHES ON 2002 SERIES Canadian Ryon Bell went 3-2 on the weekend, but one of his high points was that he was one of the few to c:lean sec:tion six, whic:h gave many riders fives. Geoff Aaron tried his hardest to steal the c:hampionship at the final round, but his 2·1 sc:ores only got him c:loser. In thl; final championship standings, Crosset topped Aaron 256 to 236 for the title, with Bell in third with 192 points. New York's Ray Peters and Canadian Wilson Craig rounded out the top five for the year with 168 and 150, respectively. Saturday was the only thing that kept the ERE/Gas Gas pilot from sweeping both days. With Crosset only needing a fifth on Saturday to wrap up the title, some insiders thought the event in Colorado would be a bit anticlimactic, but most of the riders felt there was still a lot to prove. Ryon Bell, who started the year in a funk, was on a roll after a dominating win at EI Trial de Espana the week before and was looking to end the year positively. Meanwhile, Geoff Aaron has felt all year that the title was within his grasp and wanted nothing more than to prove that Crosset's championship was a fluke. Also, there were the usual end-of-the-year rumors about who's going to ride what next year, and some riders were looking to impress potential backers. STORY AND PHOTOS BY SHAN MOORE/ TRIALS COMPETITION NEWSPAPER COTOPAXI, CO, AUG. 10·11 elgium's Freddie Crosset clinched his second consecutive U.S. National title with a win on Saturday, while Geoff Aaron finished out the year the way he began - with a convincing win on Sunday, at the final two rounds of the AMA/NATC U.S National Trials Series held near Cotopaxi, Colorado. "It was kind of like 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,'" said Aaron of his weekend. Aaron, who has won six national titles in the last nine years, had perhaps his best ride of the season, posting the lowest score for five of the six laps contested during the two-day event. An ugly first loop on Saturday B 52 AUGUST 28, 2002' cue I • n .. wv s Almost 130 riders started the Rocky Mountain Trials Associationhosted event, held on private property just north of the Arkansas river near Cotopaxi. Cliff Tucker, Larry Lund and crew set up 15 sections utiliZing the porous sandstone boulders that litter the local landscape. A combination of loose sand, tight markings and vertical rock faces made for a high scoring, but very spectacular final event. Geoff Aaron was eager to get down to business and jumped out ahead of the pack, reaching the very intimidating section number six first. A 10-foot rock wall with a ledge halfway up stood between Aaron and a clean ride. Unfortunately, the ledge won. This section proved to be particularly troublesome for all the top riders. Aaron, Crosset, Bell and Peters struggled here on lap one, taking 5s on the brutal wall. "When I first came to that section and saw the big wall, I said, 'Oh man, I don't know if anybody's gonna make that,'" Aaron said. "I guess what was going through my mind was just, 'how are we gonna do it?' The first couple of times I rode it, I think I felt like I wasn't going to make it even before I tried it. Then, once I realized that people were starting to make it, it's like, 'this is do-able, all I've got to do is splatter and hit the gas at the right time and have confidence in myself,' and on the third lap I made it. It's just that the thing was so big and it just took me a couple of loops to get the confidence to hit it the right way." Wilson Craig proved that the only way over the wall was to launch off a rock a few feet in front of it, splatter onto the ledge midway up with the rear wheel and unload up the final step. His ability to make the wall placed Craig solidly in second after the first lap. Ryon Bell, Ray Peters, Travis Fox and Chris Florin would each return to clean section six on the final lap, while Aaron posted two 5s and a two and Crosset dropped three 5s. Chris Rorin, shown here splattering sec:tion six, was another one to c:lean the sec:tion. He went 6-6 at the final two rounds.