Norba #2 Snow Shoe Mountain, West Virginia

Round #2 of the 2003 Norba Tour took place this past weekend in a wet West Virginia. Know as one of the less like courses on the Norba Circuit, the crew put together a better race venue than last years, but still sub par for Pro racing. In the end in didn't, matter much, as torrential rains took its tool on the West Virginia Mountains, leaving the riders with a rutty, muddy course to compete on. AS luck would have it, most of the course dries up just before the event started, but this made for very bad racing conditions, as you didn't know what part of the course would be soft or hard.

Wade Bootes, who was still was recovering from a broken collar bone 4 weeks ago, took to the wet course with confidence, as IRC had a new mud tire ready for him, and Wade, who is not know for going super fast in the muddy conditions, gave the tire the great stamp of approval, as he qualified 1st place for the Pro Mountain Cross.
Unfortunately, that was the end of Wade's good luck, as come race time, the course was a mess and Wade wound up crashing in a hi speed part of the course. Here is Wade's story.

"Some of the jumps were still wet as they were holding water and left a few ruts on the take off and in the middle of the jumps. I had my dry tires back on and the course was fast. I won my first round and also was in the lead in the second round until I hit one of the tricky sections on the course. It was a tight hip corner step down jump, which had a few ruts on the take off. I was going to the inside of the ruts so that I would have a good surface to jump off. I am still not really sure what happened but when I took off from the jump I was sent into an endo. It was just like my back wheel got hung up on something, but I am sure I missed the rut. I was in the air trying to pull it back and thought I had it for a second, but by the second bounce on my front wheel I was heading over the bars. The dirt was not the greatest here more like fill dirt with a lot of rocks. So basically I came down hard on my head and bad shoulder."

I was slowly got off the course and sat down for about 20 min... I was pretty much out of it. Felt like I was just run over by a truck. I was really worried about my collar bone and was not really moving it as I had a lot of skin off my shoulder. I ended up going to the hospital to get a check up x ray on my collar bone and also to check over my head. Everything came back fine.
With me qualifying 1st I ended up 9th for the day.
So I will have a few days off so I can get over all the soreness and head off to MT Snow, Vermont with the team Monday for the next round of the Norba series."

Wade sponsors include Trek/Volkswagen, Azonic, O' Neal, Oakley, IRC, AC Components, ATI, THE, ToolShed, Powerbar, Thompson, Bombshell, WadeBootes.com, and BMXpros.com