A week ago as 40 women spun out of the gate in the second race at the Wild Rose MX Park in Calgary, the weather was not good.
Rain started coming down in sheets. There was hail. There was wind.
"I just had to keep going," said Sara King, an 18-year-old motocross rider from Fort St. James. "I was so cold and I was just freezing. I said 'I've got to keep going.'"
King's mantra was key as she won the moto. Earlier, under overcast skies, she was also victorious in the first moto of the day. By the time racing was finished, she claimed the Canadian Motosport Racing Corporation's Western Women's Pro National title.
The pair of motos were the fifth and sixth races to wrap up the Canada West championship, which also made stops in Nanaimo on June 6 and Kamloops on May 30. In Nanaimo, King captured the first race and finished second in the second race to go along with a pair of second-place finishes in Kamloops.
"In Kamloops I started out front in the first moto and I won the hole shot (that goes to) the first bike into the first corner," she said. "I was against a girl from Saskatchewan who races on sand tracks and Kamloops is a sand track. She won both motos and got away from me. In Nanaimo, it's a hard-packed track and we were neck-and-neck. I won the first moto and the girl from Saskatchewan won the second. Calgary was a hard-packed track and I was six points behind her going into the weekend. But she had a wreck in between Nanaimo and Calgary and didn't race."
King's Canada West championship title last week, the first in her 10-year career, goes along with the bronze medal she claimed in the 2014 series.
"In Calgary it was a big podium set up with the top five racers," she said. "They called us up to hand out additional awards and I received the No. 1 plate for winning the title. We were interviewed and then the top three do a champagne ceremony. It was the first time I stood on the top of the podium. I was really happy."
King will be in P.G. this weekend for the Prince George Motocross Association's races, part of the B.C. Motocross Association circuit at the Blackwater Motocross Park.
The gates drop at 9 a.m. today and Sunday.
King, who's sponsored by Kourtney Lloyd of Cycle North in Prince George, credits spending almost all of April practicing at tracks in southern California as the key to her success this season.
After working all winter at a Fort St. James sawmill and saving up, she left her job at the end of March, drove to New Westminster to pick up her Cycle North teammate Summer Knowles, and continued south to sunny California near Menifee, an area between Los Angeles and San Diego that has 10 motocross tracks.
"We rode every single day and just practiced," said King. "There are quite a few different tracks and they maintain them so well. They were so fun to ride. You'd go to a different track and you'd never get bored. It helped me out because I'd never had so much seat time before. For 22 days we rode and that never happens in Canada. It was unreal."
King rides a 2013 Honda 250cc bike and has a pair of them that she can manoeuvre quite well around the track, even with her five-foot-two frame.
"It's definitely a fast bike and I'm tiny but with my strength training I can handle it," she said.
Upon returning to Canada at the end of April, she competed in two Alberta races in Brooks and Calgary prior to the first pair of motos of the Canada West series in Kamloops.
King has competed in the pro women's series for the last four years, but she kick-started her career as an eight-year-old on a 65cc bike.
"When I'm at the track, the atmosphere is like one big family," she said. "Everybody knows each other. I've met so many people from across the country I wouldn't normally meet."
After this weekend's races, King may compete at a BCMA race in Quesnel in July. She's also eyeing a return to Walton, Ont., for the Grand National championship in August.
