Blunk’s mom, Blevins’ dad look back on their kids’ travels – The Durango Herald

Both families are in France ready to cheer on their Olympians

Christopher Blevins and his father Field pose for a photo early in his career. (Durango Herald file photo)

Regardless of the sport, high-level athletes thrive with a strong support system around them. It’s rarely an easy path to the top level of any sport, and there are setbacks. Family and friends are essential to help the athlete recover and propel him forward. On the other hand, family and friends are there to celebrate triumphs and achievements.

Elizabeth Barnet remembers her daughter, Savilia Blunk, riding with her older brothers in Inverness, Calif., and wanting to follow in their footsteps because Blunk’s brother competed on a development team in high school.

Barnet said Blunk has been very interested in mountain biking since she was a young teenager. Barnet said the support Blunk has had hasn’t come one way. It’s been a series of hookups and some tough times during COVID-19 for Blunk and now her fiance Cole Paton.

“The actual path it took was not something we could have predicted,” Barnet said. “He really loves what he does. She is also very artistic. She’s very graceful and it’s like a craft, her cycling. And that runs in the family, I would say, because her father and grandfather were both artists. But I don’t know any Olympians in our family.”

Blunk’s confidence has grown over the years, which has allowed her to increase what she envisions as possible, according to Barnet. Blunk has made progress in her thinking, and Barnet knows how important the mind is in Blunk’s profession.

The move to Durango was critical to Blunk’s progress because the Durango and Fort Lewis College communities inspired a sense of fun and inclusiveness that was important to Blunk, according to Barnet.

“She impresses me, she really does in a lot of ways,” Barnet said of Blunk. “Her maturity around it and of course she has people contributing to it. Cole was a beautiful kind of balance and enhancement of their lives, both of them towards each other.”

Barnet’s heart rate is usually very high, but he realizes that he has no control over the races. She usually gets excited and nervous, whether she’s at Blunk’s races or watching them live at midnight when Blunk competes in the World Cup in Europe.

She doesn’t know where she’ll be on the course Sunday in the Olympic women’s mountain bike race. But she knows she’s grateful to see her daughter doing what she loves.

Christopher Blevins comes from a family of doctors. His father, Field, is a retired orthopedic surgeon. Field’s brother is a doctor at Stanford. Christopher’s sister Kaylee is in medical school. Field’s father was a pediatrician.

Starting when Christopher was six, Field would take Christopher to BMX races when Field wasn’t working. Christopher raced BMX until he was 16, and when Christopher was young, Field just wanted Christopher to have fun doing something healthy. It was questioned at the time whether these BMX skills would transfer to mountain biking and road cycling.

Field and Christopher even flew to some of the biggest events and returned from those events multiple times, with Christopher being a winner.

Now, Field fondly remembers those trips for the process, not the results, and the moments with his son.

“Just all the memories are important,” Field said. “As everything has intensified, as you can imagine, it’s still hard, but over the years, the dependence on the parent is less and less and correspondingly so. It’s an adjustment for the parent and it’s both an opportunity for the child and the way it should be.”

One thing Field learned from his father was to do whatever your passion is and be the best at it. After all the years of watching Christopher, Field feels like he knows how his son will feel after a race, whether Field gets a call from Christopher an hour after the race or the next day. Field knows Christopher is focused on the process and reaching his potential.

Christopher started mountain biking at the age of eight. Field recalls Christopher going on his first mountain bike ride with Durango Devo co-founder Chad Cheeney near Fort Lewis College. Then Field’s wife, Priscilla, received a call from Cheeney saying that Christopher had fallen and injured his wrist. Cheeney felt terrible about it, but it didn’t deter Christopher, and once he recovered, he returned to the trails and joined Durango Devo.

“Then when he got to Devo, it was really like their tagline, never forget the feeling, building bikers for life and having fun,” Field said. “So it was like the BMX training sessions where these kids from Durango BMX, they’d ride their bikes for hours and work really hard, but they didn’t know it. They were having so much fun. Devo was like that with the camaraderie and he was low key. If you want to compete with that it is available and we will help you with that. But let’s ride our bikes. It’s a great start for them.”

When Christopher was in high school, he was very busy with BMX, road racing and riding the Durango Devo. He gave up BMX racing to focus on road racing and mountain biking. He saw that older BMX riders had a different lifestyle with a lot of time in the weight room, and there were more sprinters who didn’t look like him, according to Field.

Then after several years of road racing for Axeon’s development team – Hagens Berman, Christopher decided to focus on mountain biking full time in 2019. It has paid off and provided a lot of great memories for him and his family .

One memory was Field watching Christopher at the World Championships in Val di Sole, Italy via stream on his iPad at home, and the stream cut off before the end of the race. Priscilla was at the event and Field learned his son had won the short track race from his wife’s screams of joy on the phone as Christopher crossed the line.

Another major win was at Snowshoe, West Virginia in 2022 when Christopher won the World Cup short track race. Field was so excited to see his son on the podium that he quickly walked past the security guard. Security started to grab him, but let him go once Christopher came to hug his father.

Field and Christopher will be hoping for similar successes and celebrations on Monday after the men’s mountain bike race.

When Christopher was younger, Field was positioned at the starting line to hold his water bottles, jacket and an umbrella.

Now Field plans to climb a climb he believes will be important in the race to cheer on his son. He will provide a little extra encouragement where it could make a difference in Christopher’s pursuit of his Olympic dreams.

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