Local mountain bike teams gear up as the Fox US Open comes to Deer Valley

Photo: Outlaw MTB.

PARK CITY, Utah — Park City is about to become the epicenter of American downhill mountain biking. The Fox US Open of Mountain Biking runs Sept. 11-13 at Deer Valley Resort, as it hosts the final round of the Pro Downhill Series and the Official US National Mountain Bike Championship on Bald Eagle Mountain.

Over three days, professional, amateur, youth, and adaptive athletes will compete for championship titles on Deer Valley’s downhill terrain, with Pro Finals set for Saturday, Sept. 12. Spectators can watch elite racing, explore the resort’s lift-served bike park, and take in a weekend built around the sport. All guests need a ticket to attend. Options include a free spectator ticket for access to the Snow Park base area, or a paid Pro Downhill Course Scenic Ride Ticket that includes a ride on the Silver Lake Express to the Silver Lake area, lunch, and a ride on the Homestake Express to the race venue before walking back down to Snow Park.

For two local development teams, Outlaw MTB and RaceKraft MTB, having the sport’s biggest domestic event land in their backyard is a milestone years in the making.

Outlaw MTB: a homecoming for local riders

Outlaw MTB is a youth development and elite downhill mountain bike racing program founded in 2015 by Tyson Henrie. What began as a small offseason program for ski racers has grown to more than 120 athletes, ranging from 6-year-olds learning the fundamentals of the sport to athletes competing internationally at the World Cup level. Riders progress through several development groups, from the Banditos and Nomads for younger athletes to the Mavericks, the Factory Development program and, ultimately, Outlaw Intense Racing.

The program has developed riders competing at the national and international level, including athletes racing World Cups in Europe.

Henrie isn’t based in Park City or Salt Lake City, but he said most of his athletes are. The program also has a chapter in Canada and recently opened one in Crested Butte, Colorado, with plans to expand to the East Coast next year.

Having the US Open at Deer Valley instead of its previous home in Vermont matters directly to Outlaw families, Henrie said.

“We’re excited it is coming to Utah, because in the past it’s always been out east, out of Vermont,” Henrie said. Traveling during the school year was expensive and difficult, he said, and racing close to home means athletes can sleep in their own beds and save money.

Outlaw MTB plans to bring roughly 60 athletes to the race, Henrie said, including 15 to 20 from outside Utah. Riders who train mostly on East Coast dirt will find Utah’s trails behave differently, he said: drier and dustier, what he called “moon dust,” with rockier terrain where rocks tend to shift beneath the rider, compared with the tackier, root-heavy soil out east.

Because Deer Valley has redesigned much of the course specifically for the event, even the local athletes won’t have the advantage of extensively training on the exact race track beforehand, Henrie said. Instead, the team is focusing on adaptable fundamentals such as vision, body position and the ability to quickly read unfamiliar terrain.

Henrie’s path into mountain biking began on skis. A longtime ski racer and coach, he has spent nearly two decades coaching and developing young athletes through the Arrowhead Ski Team at Sundance Resort. He began downhill mountain biking around age 20 and eventually started taking his ski athletes riding during the offseason. As the group grew, families began asking for more formal coaching, and in 2015 Henrie turned it into Outlaw MTB, a name that reflected the program’s unconventional approach to athlete development.

“Downhill isn’t scary when it’s done right,” Henrie said. “It’s about progression. You teach kids the skills, let them build confidence and gradually give them harder things to overcome.”

RaceKraft MTB: mentorship over numbers

RaceKraft MTB is an intentionally small program. Co-owners and head coaches Leslie Czerwinski and Kris Baughman started the youth gravity development team a decade ago and have capped it at around 20 athletes at a time to preserve a close coach-to-athlete ratio, now supported by six coaches. Czerwinski said the team began as an enduro race program before shifting toward downhill as interest in the discipline cycled back.

The idea for the team took shape when a group of parents kept asking them to formalize a program, Czerwinski said. The decision came together during a camping trip at the old Rampage site in Virgin, Utah.

Czerwinski, who also works as a mental health therapist, leads much of the team’s mindset and mental-strength training. Baughman, who has spent more than 30 years in the bike industry as a mechanic, suspension technician and racer, oversees the technical side. Baughman said he has raced at Deer Valley since the mid-1990s and helped build the original course used for a national championship event there in 1996.

“Racecraft is used loosely in some motorsports,” Baughman said. “We teach athletes to use their power to their advantage. Some may be smaller, lighter riders, and they need to find a different way down the track that suits their body type and riding style. So being crafty is like being patient to take a different line that might not be the fastest line, but works better for one individual.”

RaceKraft’s roster currently ranges from an 11-year-old to Danny Pugmire, now a professional racer who started with the team as a high school mountain bike athlete and today also coaches. The team draws most of its athletes from Park City and Salt Lake City, with some from as far as Ogden and Oakley, and one remote athlete from Grand Targhee, Wyoming.

About 15 RaceKraft athletes are expected to compete at the Fox US Open. Only about six athletes made the trip when the event was held in Vermont last year, so hosting it locally opens the race up to far more of the team.

Training runs year-round starting in January with two days a month of gym work focused on strength, mindset, mobility, balance and coordination. Once the season begins, athletes practice on dirt twice a week, about eight hours total, with a coach-to-athlete ratio of roughly 1:4. As the team’s biggest event of the year approaches, coaches fine-tune bike setups, including suspension and tire choice, and practice at Deer Valley, Solitude and other Wasatch venues to build familiarity with local terrain.

Preparing teenage athletes for the scale of a national event is as much a mental task as a physical one, Baughman said.

“Mindset is the largest factor, especially for these younger riders who are still learning and whose brains are developing,” Baughman said. He said even athletes who know the terrain well can struggle with the pressure of racing in front of a large crowd and media presence, so coaches spend time helping riders focus on what they can control.

The team emphasizes process-based goals, like executing a clean run and race-day routine, over outcome-based ones like finishing on the podium.

“If they go through the process and they warm up correctly, and they prep their bike, and they eat, and they sleep, and they go through the course in their mind, and they choose the line that is appropriate for them … ultimately, that’s the goal,” Baughman said. They said the broader aim is to build resilience and discipline that carries into life beyond racing.

A shared moment for the local scene

Both teams described the Fox US Open’s arrival in Park City as a rare chance to showcase the region’s riding community without asking families to travel across the country. Henrie encouraged the public to come check out the event in person.

“Deer Valley is putting in a lot of effort to make it really cool,” Henrie said. “So just come check it out and support local riders.”

Find more information on the Fox US Open, reserve free spectator tickets, and buy pro downhill course tickets on Deer Valley Resort’s website,