Qualifying for a downhill World Cup is harder than it’s ever been before. Finals fields are smaller and the racing is incredibly tight at the top. It’s harder, unless your Asa Vermette.
The young U.S. racer found time to throw a backflip into his qualifying run on Friday in Lenzerheide. And still went fastest. Frameworks Racing’s junior set a time of 2:52.943. That put him fastest in the junior men’s race, well ahead of French brothers, and recent world champion, Max and Till Alran.
It also looked pretty damn cool.
Vermette wasn’t the only rider backflipping the Lenzerheide bridge this week. But he was defintiely the only one who was, erm, let’s call it “confident” enough to do it in a race run.
“I went pretty deep, I went to flat,” Vermette admits. “I probably lost a solid .8 seconds.”
Once he was back right side up, the American admitted he was able to concentrate a bit more one racing than, you know, hitting mid-run tricks, adding “I’m pretty sure I turned on the GoPro…”
The U.S. racer is already making a career of defying expectations, though. He stepped out of this year’s World Cup season to become the youngest-ever Red Bull Hardline winner. That unseated Canada’s own Jackson Goldstone from that title. Vermette nearly stole that record from the Canadian, who was absent from Hardline Wales, earlier in the year when the two went head-to-head at Hardline Maydena.