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Veenendaal soaring to new heights
Kurtis J. Wood/sports@qvpr.com
Fifteen-year-old Quincy resident Michael Veenendaal is off to a strong start in this summer’s local BMX racing season.
In his first BMX racing season, Michael Veenendaal strung together 30 straight wins.
The 15-year-old Quincy resident’s torrid pace vaulted him through classifications like a knife through butter. Before he knew it, his novice status was replaced by intermediate status, which gave way quickly to expert status.
All of that improvement came in 2008, his first year on the track. That was also the same year BMX hit the world stage as an Olympic sport.
His uncle, Steve Gilliland, introduced Veenendaal to the sport. BMX seemed like a good fit for him at the time because of his natural love of bicycling and his desire to make jumps at his family homestead outside of Quincy.
“I ride a lot and had the jumps out here for a long time,” Veenendaal said. “I got my first bike when I was 18 months and I was riding without training wheels at 3. I started jumping when I was 5 with a block of wood and a piece of plywood, and it just got bigger and bigger.”
His passion took a firm hold right out the gate in 2008.
“It was a lot different than I was used to,” he said. “The first year was a whole big learning experience. I just fell in love with it in that first race, and I was racing every weekend from that day.”
The next year was more turbulent for Veenendaal as he opened the season at the expert level and found out firsthand what the back of the pack looks like.
“Those first races I really am not sure (what happened),” he said “I wasn’t really skilled and I didn’t know how to do everything the right way. I could just get out in front first.”
He decided it was time to meld his natural abilities with more practice, workouts and a new bike. It took a few races, but his hard work started to pay off.
“So I got last place my first five races or so. I got dead last every time,” Veenendaal said. “That’s when I started working out, just started building more jumps here and I started practicing just about every day, just trying to get better. To start winning again? Probably about half way.”
His new Avent Neo bicyle also made a huge impact. At that point Gilliland chipped in and helped to build the bike with new components.
“I just bought the frame and then all the parts. I put it together myself and my uncle helped me a lot. It was all the cheap stuff at first, and then I started upgrading,” Veenendaal said. “There’s a huge difference, which I wasn’t aware of. Getting into and learning that stuff helps a lot.”
He found his spring again, which gave him an edge in the first straight of an M-shaped quarter-mile track.
“You have to be in extremely good shape, really strong and you have to be good on the bike,” he said. “Usually the first corner decides a race. Most of the time whoever gets the hole shot will win.”
Veenendaal earned a place in the the American Bicycle Association BMX state championship series. He placed third in the first few rounds of state, then passed through the quarterfinals with a fourth-place finish before disaster struck in the semifinals to end his season abruptly.
“In the semis I hit another guy and crashed in the second straight. We were both trying to get on our bikes because we knew the next person to make it to the finish line would make the main event. We were just scrambling and my arm was bleeding. It was a pretty bad crash,” Veenendaal said. “I grabbed my bike and just remember running up the jump and hopping on my bike and it started to fall apart. My seat was twisted, my brake lever broke off and my handle bars were all bent up. I just stood there staring at it, and you know, it was like, ‘Oh, man.’ I didn’t want it to end like that, but that was it. That was the first time I did not make a main event. Done, just like that.”
This season started out like his first year — winning. He has three races under his belt in 2010. He got a late start after he missed going to the state championships in the pole vault as a member of the Quincy High School track and field team. (The top three advanced to state out of districts; Veenendaal placed fourth.) But that only kept him in shape and allowed him to sprint out to a couple of wins on the bike.
“I went down to Moses Lake my first race of the year and got first and the second race I got first,” Veenendaal said. “The third race was a state championship round in Moses Lake and I got first, which got me really excited, and the day after I went down to Richland for another state round and got third overall, so I am doing pretty good this year.”
