Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126456
Canada -Northern California·Northern Nevada·Oregon·Washington·ldaho-Utah-t Clark Gardner clicks up a cog at MRA cross country. Gardner storms to victory at MRA cross country By Delbert Longbrake JACKSONVILLE, OR.JAN. 15 Clark Gardner weathered a tropical storm to take an over· all win at the Motorcycle Riders Association's cross country race held near Jacksonville, Oregon. Gardner, fitted with water skiing gloves, fmished the rain-shortened race by at least a 10-minute margin over the second place finisher. The whole concept of this particular race was to give the riders a "real" cross country, one that they would long remember as being tough to complete. The original course layout would have been sufficient to reach that goal, but mother nature decided to help out. Seems as though there was a tropical storm moving onto the Oregon coast from Hawaii. Heaven knows that Oregon gets enough rain without receiving Hawaii's leftovers. It poured all day Saturday, much to the chagrin of the course layout people. Saturday night showed no sign of relief and prospective riders awoke to the sound of rain Sunday morning. Many of the local rivers and streams raised to dangerous levels and what were usually small trickles turned into raging creeks. . Eighteen brave riders turned Qut Sunday morning to do battle and when two of the favorites, Clark Gardner and Jow Stagg, showed up, the mood of the day was set as Stagg appeared wearing a skin diving mask and Gardner wore a water skiing vestl The riders lined up on the starting area awaiting the signal to attack the course. Most wouldn't have been so eager to leave if they had known about the secret new trail which lay JUSt out of sight of the start and was built especially for this event. It took three men three days to blaze and clear this trail which was about a mile long; 5250 feet of which was down hill. And what about that missing 50 feet? It was there alright. Right at the bottom in the form of an uphill. That trail and especially the 50-foot uphill really proved to the "real" in the phrase real cross country. Only one wreck occured at the start as an unidentified rider got a taste of what was in store for everyone. Stagg bolted ahead on his Yamaha with Gardner following close behind on his 420 KTM. The other 15 riders followed and went out of sight. Usually the starting area gets boring at about this time as everyone waits for their riders to come through after their first lap. But this was no ordinary cross country. Some guy in a Ford LTD Sedan came screaming up the road, a road which four wheel drives had trouble making, and other than some beautiful full lock slides at about 50 mph, the guy didn't have too much trouble. This masked man then pulled into the starting area, calmly put the car into park, and got out. The crowd had a new hero as mouths dropped in disbelief. Meanwhile, four miles and two steep downhills into the course, Gardner had a two minute lead over Stagg who was one and a half minutes ahead of Scott Coash. Coash had some trouble earlier on the new trail. The trail was only wide enough for one motorcycle at a time and passing was impossible. Coash was in front of a group of riders when the front wheel of his Husky dropped into a hole. Scott couldn't get his wh~l out of the hole and moving again. Meanwhile, a whole group of riders waited desperately to get by. So Coash calmly got off his bike, picked up the rear end and flipped his bike end over end to gel out of the way. Behind Coash and in fourth place was the Oregon desert ace. Kirk Russell. In all, eight riders made it to the first check. which was after the new trail, in fairly good time. That left the other eight somewhere on the trail. Those eight riders were having trouble with mud and granite packing the chain and sprockets and thereby locking up the rear wheel. Abou't every ten feet. the rider would have to stop, lift the back of the bike and try to free the wheel. And once the rider made it through the mud and forded several creeks, which weren't there when the trail was made, he then had to make the 50-foot hill at the bottom. The race was called at a lap and a half instead of the three that were originally plumed. The first rider to corne in was Gardner. About 10 minutes later. Stagg came in. He had trouble with his rear brake and had to stop to make repairs on it. "Crash" Coash carne in 10-minutes late for third overall and first in the 250cc class. Fred Pariani rolled in on his 100cc Suzuki to take first in the Old Timers or "masters" as Fred likes to call it. Kirk Russell was next in for We'll also train you in starting, braking, all the skills of motocross. Our school is the Official Suzuki School of Motocross. And our classroom is the famed Carlsbad International Raceway. 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