Bollinger didn’t get the best start as he found himself shuffled back mid-pack on the opening lap. He quickly charged from 10th to fifth in the first hour, setting himself up for a mid-race charge into podium contention. While running third, Bollinger made a few costly mistakes that dropped him to sixth and he slowly climbed back into the top-five battle late in the race. Making a last-lap push, Bollinger was able to overtake fifth and make a valiant charge up to fourth, where he finished only four seconds behind in fifth.

“I’m finally healthy and glad to be at the races. It’s been a long off-season working with all the guys,” Bollinger said. “I got a pretty bad start and finally inched my way up to third about halfway through and I really tried to catch Ben and Josh but I wasn’t able to make it happen. I’d catch them and then make some mistakes and then I got shuffled back and it took me a lap or two to get it all figured out. I was able to make a late-push and ended up fifth place, so it’s a pretty good day for me.”

DeLong got off to a fifth-place start going into the woods but he got shuffled back to seventh by the end of the opening lap. He bounced around inside the top-10 for most of the race, intensely mixing it up with a freight-train of riders for three long hours. The XC1 rookie eventually caught up to his teammate, Bollinger, later in the race and he finished strong with a last-lap pass for sixth on the day.

“My whole goal for today was to try to ride as hard as I could for as long as I could,” DeLong said. “I got shuffled back and I tried to latch onto the freight train but that’s kind of where I was at the whole race. I got a little bit lucky with some people crashing and not finishing but for the most part I’m pretty happy with how I rode. I have some things to work on but it’s good to know where I stand going into the next round.”