Photos courtesy of Shawn Schooley. Jacob Schooley competes in the Far North BMX races in Fairbanks in August. Schooley, competing for the first time at the intermediate level after winning the race at the beginner level the two previous years, finished in second place by only a few inches.

Story by Clark Fair

Redoubt Reporter

Fortunately for the father-son racing duo of Shawn and Jacob Schooley, competing at the national downhill mountain bike races earlier this summer was a case of what goes down must come up.

Although both riders had unfortunate falls at the Grandby, Colo., event in July, they both came away thrilled by the experience, both were elevated to No. 1 status in their sport in the state of Alaska, and Shawn nabbed two more sponsors to help keep him in a sport that demands skill and expensive equipment.

At nationals, Shawn’s fall came on one of the practice-race days leading to the finals.

On the first day of practice, the 35-year-old Expert Class racer said, “I got my suspension dialed in,” meaning that he was figuring out the obstacle-laced mountain course and exactly how he was going to attack it for maximum efficiency. He was memorizing every nuance of the trail that featured boulders and logs, single and double jumps, and sharp turns, in addition to a steep descent down a forested hillside.

At the end of that first day, he said his times were comparable to those of the top-10 racers, but on the next day of practice, his racing ended abruptly.

Racers are sent down the course on regular timed intervals, and on a sharp turn the racer just before him had apparently dislodged a small boulder, causing it to roll down into Shawn’s path and under his front tire.

There was a double jump after the turn, and striking the boulder caused Shawn’s bike to rotate so that he took the jump sideways. He had been hoping to clear the obstacle entirely, but his back tire struck the second jump, and he was slammed into “a pile of grapefruit-sized rocks,” striking his head and his left hip.

Luckily, his head was encased in a racing helmet, but even his hip pads couldn’t prevent one stone from actually puncturing the skin. He tried to get back on his bike and finish, but he said that his body simply wouldn’t respond.

“It was a hematoma,” he said. Later, “my whole hip turned black. Blue, blue, green — all those nasty colors.”

Since his $6,500 bike was undamaged, he hoped that somehow he would feel miraculously better in the morning and still be able to race, but instead he could barely move. More than six weeks after the experience, his hip still showed signs of the bruising.

Shawn was disappointed but unbowed. He came away believing that his times before the accident indicated that he was competing at “podium level.”

“I’m confident I could’ve been in the top five if everything had gone right,” he said.

Jacob Schooley barrels down the obstacle-filled course at the national finals of downhill mountain bike racing at Grandby, Colo., in July. Despite falling later on a tough turn, Schooley finished 31st overall.

Fourteen-year-old Jacob was racing in the Junior Class, and he finished 31st overall, despite losing considerable time on a slide-out on one of the turns. In a race in which the difference between finishers is often fractions of seconds, Jacob was held up for about five seconds by a race official — as a safety precaution — until the next racer passed, and the slide-out also cost Jacob valuable momentum.

Shawn estimated that, based on the times in his practice runs, Jacob might have been able to place as high as 15th, or perhaps higher.

In the weeks after the race, both Shawn and Jacob were excited to learn that USA Cycling, the main sanctioning body for American cycling, had ranked both riders at the top of the downhill racing heap in Alaska. Shawn was ranked No. 1 in the Men’s Expert Level, and Jacob was ranked No. 1 in the Sport Level for Junior Riders.

In addition to their ongoing sponsorship by Fuel Clothing, Shawn also received sponsorships from Rocky Mountain Roastery and Steel MX (makers of racing goggles and eyewear).

In a coda to their racing summer, the Schooleys also traveled north in late August to allow Jacob to compete once again in the final race of the five-race state BMX series. Because Jacob had won the race in the Beginner Class the two previous years, he was moved up to the Intermediate Class, and he finished second, crossing the finish line less than a foot behind the winner.

Next up for the Schooleys is saving up the money to attend another race Outside that will allow them to qualify once again for nationals.

They are not about to allow falling down to keep them from moving up.