Interview with Mount Snow Event Director, Greg Fisher

Give us a little background about Mount Snow as a venue for Mountain Biking Competitions?

Mountain Bike Competitions have been held at Mount Snow for nearly 20 years. The 2007 USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships will be 19th consecutive major mountain bike competition Mount Snow has held. By major event we are talking about World Cups, NORBA National Championship Series Races, Jeep King of the Mountain and even the inaugural 1995 ESPN Extreme Games. (Yup, Mount Snow hosted the XGames in the summer too!)

When and how did the relationship between Mount Snow and the Iron Horse Downhill Series come about?

Mount Snow started a downhill series in 2005 with the Spy Optic DH Series. Other than the NMBS series, Mount Snow hadn't hosted its own series event in quite some time so we started out with a new DH idea and pitched some sponsors. Plattekill in New York was the only other mountain in the region that offered a major series event, so we thought offering another venue for downhill racing would be successful. It was. The first race we hosted here we were expecting maybe 100 riders. 175 showed up and a new series was born. After seeing the success of our first 3 race series, Iron Horse -- which was our new rental fleet partner -- became our title sponsor and the event series has flourished ever since.

These events impact athletes in other competitions besides the Iron Horse, yes?

Absolutely. THE IHDH Series is also the Vermont State Championships, which is a qualifying event for both the 2007 and the 2008 USA Cycling Mountain Bike National Championships. Competitors can qualify for the 2007 by finishing well in our first two races or for the 2008 Nationals by placing well during our last two events. The finals of the 2007 IHDH Series is also part of the new Gravity East Series and the National Mountain Bike Calendar. Both are point-based event series that tie into our current IHDH event series. The September 22-23rd weekend is considered a Category 2 race, as we'll be offering a $2,000 pro cash purse.

You're introducing a new, dual slalom event this season. What is it and why are you putting it in this year?

Yes and I'm super excited about it. It's called the Iron Horse Dual Slalom nights presented by JBL. We are going to host 3 Dual Slalom events July 7, August 18, and September 22nd on a trail called Mixing Bowl. The trail is right in the Main Base Area, features its own covered moving carpet lift, lights, and a 250 watt sound system. The course will be built in time for our first race in July and then it will be utilized for the USA National Championshps Friday (Amateur) and Saturday (Pros) nights, July 20 & 21st.

This yourmtb.com concept is new as well. What appealed to you about it?

When yourmtb.com approached us, I asked a few of our marketing staff to look at the premise and the other events yourmtb.com had worked with. After looking at the different blogs, pictures, videos that had been submitted for other events I thought we could utilize this site to give us some more exposure, as well as allow our athletes a place to post pictures and videos for contests we had planned on running internally. Yourmtb.com allowed us this option and had the programs already set up. So in the end it was no-brainer.

What do you hope the riders/spectators get out of the yourmtb.com experience?

I hope it gives them another site to have fun with. We work with Sponsorhouse.com to help our athletes promote themselves to sponsors, bustedspoke.com to promote the event and answer questsions, and now we'll use YourMtb.com as a site for videos, photos, and rider content. I think this summer we are going to be offering some really cool extras for our events. I hope everyone enjoys them and utilizes as much as they can.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Greg!