Downhill Southeast Series Q&A with Neko Mullaly

Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee have been smoldering off-season habitats for in-the-know gravity pilots for many years.

An impressive list of homegrown talent and speedy transplants from near and far with names like Herndon and Beytagh forged more than a handful of U.S. titles with hours of hard laps and low-key early season events at places like Windrock Park.

A new generation of Southeastern talent has broad shoulders to stand on, and with NC born Luca Shaw and Pennsylvania transplant Neko Mullaly rolling into the 2016 season ranked among the top 25 male downhill racers in the world by the UCI, "local" racing takes on a whole new meaning.

What follows is a brief Q&A session with Neko Mullaly, the 22 year old Gstaad-Scott pro supported by Deity Components and Oskar Blues Brewing who is behind the steering wheel for a new 3 race Southeastern DH series.

Wow!

Why hasn't therealways been early season DH racing in the Southeast?(Icycle being the notable exception)?

I want to stress that Troy Roberts at TTC and Alex Ohman at Windrock have put together awesome races the past few years.The last 2 years Luca Shaw and I benefited a lot from their pre-season events leading into the World Cup season. It worked great for us, and everyone had a great time. The races were very laid back and there was not a lot of notice before hand... So I thought that I could connect those 2 existing races with the new venue at Bailey Mountain Bike Park outside of Asheville, pump it up a little bit and get more people out to race.

Aren't you like... busy? Who is the crew driving this event?

Well, I can't ride every minute of every day! Loic is a full time student in college, so I should be able to handle this. I'm doing most of the work myself, my girlfriend made the website and did all the graphic design, and my mom will do the onsite registration. We will have volunteer course marshals at the race.

Projects like this, or coaching the gravity team at Brevard College are fun and keep me going. It's cool to see the local scene growing from these things too! Besides the fact that a project like this excited me, we really needed it! The amount of fast local dudes along with the guys like myself who have moved here to train really need something like this pre-season. The more fast guys we get here racing, the more we can learn and improve before it all counts at the big races!

Our "local" scene is getting pretty heavy! Me, my brother Logan, Luca and Walker Shaw, local pinners Max Morgan and Kyle Grau, foreign imports Mick Hannah and Isak Leivsson and west coast homies Charlie Harrison and Shane Leslie are all committed to these events and I'd like to convince a few other North American World Cup riders to join us too. For dudes from out of town, if they come to Windrock and Bailey they can get 2 racesin 8 days with access to all 3 mountains during the week in between.

Also, the Atlanta SX is onSaturday Feb. 27 and only 90min from TTC!!

This region is as close to World Cup terrain as you can get on this continent in the winter time, so i'm hoping to get some fast dudes here as lead in to the summer racing!

So, this isn't some weak SoCal-style winter series with 6" bikes then eh?

These are the tracks that Luca and I train and test on to prepare for the World Cups. Mick Hannah and Isak Leivsson both just moved to the area because of the awesome off-season riding. The race tracks are all big and fast. Windrock has 2200 ft of vert! We're gonna make the trails "rideable" for beginners and guys on smaller bikes by putting in chicken lines and go arounds, but trust me when I say they will be legit!

Venues:

Are these places that you've been regularly training and testing since you relocated to Cackalacky du Nord?

I've been hearing about Windrock forever, and Bailey has had some exposure since they opened this summer, but I think TTC is probably a place lots of people haven't heard of.

Yes, last winter I spent a lot of time at Windrock. It's the "downhill spot" in the Southeast and has been for many years. National Championship titles by Geritt Beytagh and Chris Herndon were earned in sweat over the winter at Windrock since the early 2000's. TTC is short for Trials Training Center. They hosted the 2013 FIM trials world championships, it's a full time motorcycle trials park. The local guys started shuttling downhill bikes there a few years ago, and they already have a variety of trails. I've been there several times over the last 2 off seasons and it's been a lot of fun. Bailey Mountain Bike Park just opened up this past summer and is such an asset to the Southeastern downhill community. Now with 3 year round riding spots that all feature the type of terrain we race on during the summer, the Southeast is the place to be!

Are there field limits? I would assume some of these venues have limited uplift capacity, etc.

No limitations! We may need to park people across the street for Bailey, but the other two venues have lots of parking. We will rent as many shuttle trucks as we need so that no one is waiting in line, TTC and Windrock have paved shuttle roads and will be easy, Bailey has a nice gravel road too.

Timing:

How is this hootenanny gonna be scored? The website makes it clear that these events are all about getting the gang together, but getting accurate times is a big part of the pre-season dialing-it-in experience. Will there be timed training or seeding runs?

I have been using a manual timing app for iPad that is pretty accurate. It's free compared to a timing company and I plan on having 2 systems running at once so we have a back up. It may not be accurate to the .001 of a second, but It is accurate to the .25 of a second, and compared to the expense of a timing company, I thought it would be better to put the money in other areas. Having more shuttle trucks and running them from early am til dark so that people can get in more runs, great prizes and purse, and cheaper entries is what my vision is for a pre-season training race, rather than Swiss timing.

Cashmoney Purse, wow!
$500 bucks for the winning (male) at one of these events, and $500 for the overall is like, pretty dang good pay too!

Plush giftcards from WorldwideCyclery for the amateurs as well. Who is to thank for such things?

Well, hopefully enough people will sign up so we can afford it! If I win, that will save me 2k in prize money, so the pressure's on! I just want this to be about the riders and show what we want to see at other races. WorldWideCyclery came through with some awesome gift cards, as good as cash for bike parts online. Hopefully we can stoke some people out!