Over seven hours, seven sets of winners were crowned in seven categories as the Fernie TransRockies Society hosted the Fernie Lucky 7’s cross-country mountain bike event last Saturday.
Racing solo and in teams, 57 participants completed as many circuits of a 15 kilometre loop as they could in the seven hour time limit.
Fernie’s Julie Kelly won the women’s solo category, completing seven laps in 7:21:39.
“It was a good race, lots of room for passing and good pacing,” she said. “Lap five I started to suffer a little bit and wonder what I was doing but then I managed to pull it together for the last two laps.”
Kelly is a semi-professional racer and is sponsored by Specialized Canada, Infinit Nutrition Canada and Crankbrothers.
She wanted to thank Tom Gibson for “slinging bottles all day,” and her coach Shaun Taylor
Kelly is also the manager of the Fernie Trails Alliance and helped organize the event.
“I think it was a great event and hopefully its a success next year as well,” she said.
Calgarian Dan Peters won the men’s solo category, completing seven laps in 6:42:21.
The best team of three made up of Fernie’s Troy Nixon, Ben Nixon and Scott Gerecke finished the race in 7:25:46
For every lap completed, participants got a roll at the Lucky 7 Craps table.
Fernie’s GearHub Sports provided prizes for the winners. Proceeds from registration went to local trail organizations and not-for-profits. The Fernie TransRockies Society was formed in 2002 as a not-for-profit with the objective of growing destination and community biking.