Of Course America’s Newest Olympic Mountain Biker Is from Durango

Long before earning a spot on the 2024 U.S. Olympic mountain biking team, Riley Amos was just another teenager trying to navigate his local group ride.

It just so happened that Amos’ hometown is Durango, Colorado. The ride in question—called Tuesday Night Worlds—attracts a smattering of Olympic heroes, professional racers, and legends from American cycling’s past. Every Tuesday evening cyclists depart downtown at 5 P.M. and the pace ramps up to eye-popping speeds as the peloton spins along the paved and gravel roads outside town.

“I think I’ve suffered harder in the ride than I have in any race,” Amos says. “Everyone wants to rip each other’s legs off, but also they want to take care of the young kids who show up. That ride made me stronger every year.”

Amos, now 22 years old, first attempted Tuesday Night Worlds at age 16 aboard a borrowed cyclocross bicycle. During those first few months, he attempted to hang onto the back of the peloton as long as he could, before dropping off the pace with exhausted legs and searing lungs. As the months went by, Amos lasted longer on the ride until one Tuesday, after nearly a year of efforts, he sprinted to the front of the pack up a short climb called Shalona alongside America’s first Olympic mountain biking hero, Ned Overend. As the two ascended the hill, Amos rocketed away and reached the top by himself. There were no fans in attendance, and there was no official prize for his group ride victory. But the result marked a major milestone in his early progression as a cyclist.

“It was such a big deal—it meant more to me than most of the racing results I’d gotten at that time,” Amos says. “It was this sign that I had climbed the ladder and that I really belonged.”

Riley Amos is the latest cycling star to emerge from the postcard-sized town in southwestern Colorado that, over the years, has produced more top riders than just about any U.S. city. In the early nineties, Durango was home to the first generation of mountain biking stars: Overend, John Tomac, Juli Furtado, Missy Giove, and many more. As the decades went on, the town has either produced or attracted other top road cyclists and mountain bikers: Travis Brown, Shonny Vanlandingham, Todd Wells, Carmen Small, Kristin McGrath, Howard Grotts, and Quinn Simmons, to name a few.

In fact, Amos’s teammate on the U.S. Olympic squad for Paris, Christopher Blevins, grew up just a short bike ride away in a neighborhood on the other side of town.

Why is Durango such a hotbed for pro cyclists? In 1990 the town hosted the inaugural world championships for mountain bike racing. Riders can access a world-class network of singletrack right from downtown, and climb high into the San Juan Range of the Rocky Mountains after just a few minutes of pedaling.

Durango supports a thriving after-school youth cycling program called Durango Devo, and it’s also home to two high school teams and Fort Lewis College, which boasts one of the fastest collegiate bike racing programs in the country. And in Durango, bicyclists are bonafide celebrities—this past October the town held a citywide celebration for hometown hero Sepp Kuss after he won the Vuelta a España.

“You look around and there are so many amazing peers and mentors,” Amos says. “And they show you that it’s possible to break into the sport.”

Durango’s cycling culture and infrastructure provided an ideal incubator for Amos. His parents are recreational riders who relocated to the town from Arizona just two years before he was born. When he was ten he joined Durango Devo as a way to meet other kids and burn off energy; by 13 he was going on three-day bikepacking trips; by 15 he was bombing down the scariest trails in town alongside his buddies.

“My parents didn’t want me to be an iPad kid,” Amos says. “Living in Durango made that really easy—you get dropped off right after school and ride with a coach and your buddies for hours.”

At age 15 Amos started racing and attained descent results in the freshman-level high school cross-country mountain bike races. He knew very little about endurance training or preparation and sought out a coach who did: three-time Olympian Todd Wells, a longtime Durango resident. Wells, who retired in 2017 to sell home mortgages, said Amos didn’t stand out from the crowd on climbs. But on downhills—specifically on tricky, dangerous, and technical ones—Amos turned heads.

“Older riders know there are times to risk it and to take it easy on descents,” Wells says. “Riley would just go for it every time no matter how gnarly it was and he seemed to come out OK.”

Wells taught Amos the basics of endurance training—rest, recover, repeat—and gradually increased his weekly riding miles. He invited Amos onto the Tuesday Night Worlds ride and watched as Amos thrived in the hyper-competitive environment. Over the ensuing two seasons Amos blossomed into a top racer in the region, state, and then nation. In 2018, at age 16, Amos won the junior national title in cross-country—he repeated the win in 2019. Those results earned Amos the opportunities to compete overseas.

“Some kids have been training since they were ten and already have a plan—Riley was pretty raw,” Wells says. “But he was super gung-ho and learned really fast.”

Top American mountain bikers often falter when they travel to Europe to compete in the sport’s highest international series—the UCI World Cup. The competition is fierce, the racing is elbow-to-elbow, and the courses often boast scary features, like sheer drop-offs and slippery roots. Racers must be physiologically strong in order to endure the strong tempo at the front of the field, but they must also be fearless for the tricky downhills.

Amos thrived. After graduating to the Espoir competition level—a category for up-and-coming riders under the age of 23—he became the first American man to win a World Cup round in the division during the 2023 season. In 2024 he swept the World Cup races in the Espoir category, and the results earned him a place on the Olympic team.  Amos credits his success internationally to the fearless mentality he’s developed alongside his cadre of up-and-coming American racers, including his friend Bjorn Riley, who narrowly missed out on an Olympic spot for 2024.

“We’re the best bike handlers on the circuit—if you have those skills, you’re not afraid to just fully commit to a descent and go for it,” he says. “Some people have it, some don’t.”

Amis is an outside shot for a medal in Paris—the Olympic mountain bike race will be held on Sunday, July 28, and the venue is held at Elancourt Hill, a former sandstone quarry located 25 miles east of downtown. The circuit includes sandy gravel, dusty singletrack, and man-made features that mimic the drops and descents that mountain bikers encounter on backcountry trails. Most fans will have their eyes on defending champion Tom Pidcock of Great Britain, and on Blevins, who won a round of the UCI World Cup earlier this year.

But if Amos can ride at the front and battle for a top result, he knows it will only further his place in the sport—and boost the profile of cycling back home in Durango. Because right now, there’s undoubtedly another skinny teenager struggling to keep up on the Tuesday Night Worlds ride, riding in complete awe alongside Overend, Wells, and Riley Amos.

“I love showing kids that it is possible,” Amos says.