The Biking Hub: Mountain

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Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park

Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park is like a fine wine. It gets better with age.
The unique indoor cycling facility located inside an old parachute warehouse in Cleveland, Ohio celebrated its three-year anniversary over the weekend with a grand re-opening.

The beginning

Opened in the fall of 2004, Ray’s has become something of a dream playland for mountain bikers and BMXers of all kinds. After a first year that saw the park gain some serious press and visits from all over the world, owner Ray Petro went to work in the first offseason (summer of 2005) and made major changes that included adding a foam pit, more north-shore style stunts and a more off-the-course goodies such as a fireplace lounge, TVs, video game systems, internet access and more.

The result, combined with the notoriety it gained in its first year, was an explosion of interest in the park.
The bike industry came out in full force with companies such as Gary Fisher, SRAM and GT supporting the park. But what was even more remarkable was the reaction from outside the bike industry with outside media like CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 show doing segments on the (at the time) 72,000 square foot park.
Outside sponsors also came on board with MOEN sponsoring the Sport Course and Subaru sponsoring a fantastic skatepark-style section.

And riders gave their support too.
Ray held the inaugural $10,000 3Ride Pro Invitational event in February that put some of the top riders in the world against each other in the pump track, sport course and jump park.
Fisher’s Greg Watts came away as the overall champion beating out an amazing list of professionals such as Brian Lopes, Hans Rey, Cam McCaul, Jamie Goldman, Rich Houseman and others.

And now?

So how do you one up yourself when you’ve already thrown down a gauntlet no one else has been able to match?
For Ray Petro, it meant smashing down a wall, expanding to 82,000 square feet and adding even more indoor cycling fun.
The 2006/07 season will see Ray’s Indoor Mountain Bike Park reach knew heights, quite literally.
A new cross country loop has been added to the facility that takes riders around the perimeter of the other courses and up into the rafters.
The course takes nearly two minutes to complete and is a surprising workout. The whole cross country loop is self contained, so those looking for a good winter workout can just keep doing lap after lap until their quads can’t handle it any more.

The extra square footage has also allowed Ray to turn the foam pit into the GT Jump Camp, a great section for those looking to hone their jumping and stunt skills before trying out a new move on the park’s box jumps.
The foam pit has been replace by a better, larger pit, and there is now also a large quarterpipe with a rubberized top and down ramp so you can practise your skills on a proper jump without the risk of major injuries.

Add to that a greatly expanded skatepark (for bikes of course), a larger common area for the extreme course, more stunts, more jumps and a new SRAM Lounge and you’ve got what has to be the best indoor mountain biking facility in the world.

For more information on the park check out www.raysmtb.com and to see a live image, click on the SRAM Cam.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Industry news, Bike culture, What did you ride today?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.