Mountain bike photos (slightly differnt background)

This weekend I shot a DH and DS mountain bike race in Central Calif. Took your basic sack-load of photos (1400+). Most of the these type of photos are of an individual rider ( They are racing against the clock, very rarely do you get two riders in the same frame).

I decided to play around with the background. I basically de-saturated the background while masking the ride out from the background. Here are some samples:
After:

The shots are good, the B&W background with color subject is super-cliche, though.

I'm not a big fan of the B&W. But nice cropping
Perhaps a horozontal crop of the 3rd 4th and 5th photo's may look a little better and eaiser to look at.

Sorry, preffer the originals. B&W background as said above is really cliche and takes away from your pictures. That said I really like the originals!