On The Pegs June 2019 - Volume 4 - Issue 6 | Page 149

On The Pegs Vol. 4 Issue 6 - June 2019 149 David Avendano is a seven-time Venezuelan champion who was born in Texas but currently living in Barcelona, if that’s not confusing! David is competing in the US series in 2019 for Vertigo USA. We spoke to David at the Nebraska round and he filled is in on some of his background. I was born in Texas in 2001, and then I moved to Venezuela where I lived almost seventeen years. A year ago my parents and I decided to move to Spain. Now we live there so I can race in more places and train more. In Venezuela I used to race until I was thirteen years old because there were not too many riders, so the one who organized all the races was my dad. There was one point that it didn’t make sense to spend that money there, because it would cost the same one race in Venezuela than pay an air ticket and go to Spain. The competition in Barcelona is awesome because the level is huge with rid- ers, like Toni Bou, Adam Raga. So if you go there, there is the mecca of the trials and you learn a lot. You can go training with all those good riders. At the end of the day it’s awesome because they’re your friends. The experience is awesome for me. I live thirty minutes away from Barcelona City. It’s much better because it’s more like a town. I don’t like living in the middle of the city. There’s too many people. So in the town they have ten minutes from me a few places for training, thirty minutes away are seven more places, one hour are ten more places. So I can train wherever I want, whenever I want. Toni Bou lives one hour from me. Adam Raga lives thirty minutes away from my house. Everybody is very close to that place. I came to the United States because I was born here. I always wanted to race here. Vertigo gave me the opportunity so I said, let’s do it. I’m very, very excit- ed. I prepared this since six months ago, so we’re very ready. The last time I came for racing was in 2013 to New York. Before that I came in 2012 to the TTC in Tennessee. I was the national champion, too. In Venezuela you can get whatever you want. In such a small country you can have mountains with the snow, and deserts. Whatever you want. So we have a lot of mountains, indoor sections. We have rivers. We have whatever you want. I love big rocks and splatters. In Spain we used to train a lot in places like this, and I like this, the rain. With the bike that I have right now, for this kind of ter- rain it goes perfect. n