Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eCROSS COUNTRY e AM! W iseco/Yamaha/YokohamaG National Cross Conntry Series: Ronnd 6 rand Steve McSwain (left) and Ed Lojak (ri ght) fought for positions early in the race. Terry Cunningham scored his second National Cross Country win of th e season. \ Cunningham conquers Strawberry Festival 100 By Davey Coombs Photos by C.}. Coombs BUCKHANNON, WV, JUNE 2 erry Cunningham ha d his hands fu ll at th e Straw berry Festival 100, as the 32-year-old battled ba ck 90degree heat , powdery dust, MXer Fred Andrews, the defending GNCC champ ion Scot t Summers, and nearl y 200 other riders to score his second overa ll victory of the season . Kawasaki T eam Green /Tuck er R ocky/ Sco tt/ Be1I/ D u n lop-b a cked Cunn in gham bett er ed eig h t- ti m e G NCC Champion Ed Lojak by nearly , two minutes in the overa ll tally. ATK's Lojak was the Open A division winner. Team KTM 's Scott Plessinger finis hed thi rd o vera ll with Nat ional MX privateer And rews finish ing fourth overa ll and GN CC points leader Duane Co nner rounding o u t th e top five. T he event, held in conjunc tio n with a large co m mu n ity cele bratio n in Bu ckhannon, a tt rac ted n earl y 200 en tra n ts. The six-m ile cou rse was faster th an most Eastern trai ls and the heat and lack of rain made for extreme d ust in severa l sections. One rider who had an interesting plan for combating the elements was Cu nningham , who experiment ed wit h a bab y for mul a during the three-hour long ru n . "I ha d h eard that so me o f the profession al mo tocrossers were using Pedi al ite on hot days," ex p la ined Cu n ni ng ham of the for mula to prevent deh ydrat ion in infa nts . "It hel ps to keep up the levels of your electro lytes r 18 and po tassi um . I've sulle red throug h heat exhaustio n fo ur or five tim es in my career, so I have to wat ch myself." One other little trick that some of th e woods riders pi cked up from motocrossers was th e use of " feminine napk in s" to keep sweat from drippi ng into their goggles. J eff Ru ssell was among those trying th is new method. , " Being able to see an hour in to the race is worth th e embarrassment on a hot day like th is," he said. Aaron Hough bolted into the lead when the 250cc A pack went off of th e dead-engine start into a righ t-hand corne r and then straigh t up a short hill. Plessinger made a quick move into first bu t H ou gh put him back to second a short time -la ter . Co n ne r, Cu n ningham , Russell , An drews and Kevin Brown were also in the hunt. Hough, who had won two GNCC overal lsin a row co ming into the event, opened a sho rt lead on Plessinger before the completion of the first 17min u te long lap. Andrews was ho lding thi rd in his first GNCC event of the year whil e Cun ningham and Ru ssell ro unded out the top five. But that order would soon change. " I got a rear flat at the end of the fir st lap and had to stop and change it," sai d Ru ssell of his earl y dismissal from conte ntion. " My dad tried to help me cha nge it bu t we were p retty uno rga n ized for a tire cha nge. My spare didn 't have eno ugh air in it and I had to pump it up before I coul d get back into the race." Russ ell 's troubles briefly knocked him ou t of the top 15. Steve McSwain and Lojak led the way when the second row of Open A class riders started, but it was defending GNCC Champion Summers wh o quickl y too k cont ro l. Summers ha s suffered through a string of mishaps tha t have cost him a sh ot at four o vera ll victo ries in as many races, and he seemed inte nt on snappi ng out of his run of bad luck as he soon took over the overall lead based on elapsed time. H ou gh 's hopes for a third straigh t win were dashed on lap four. After being displ aced as th e 250cc A leader by Andrews a nd Cunningham, Hough cras hed hard coming down a tram road into the scori ng checkpo in t. " I was behind some lapped riders and I figu red I would gun it to get around them ," said Hough. " I hit a rock that I didn 't see becaus e of the dust and it threw me off the emba nkment and I en doed down the hill. " H ou gh twisted hi s already-ach ing knee and promptly retired from th e race: That left Cunningha m and Andrews to battle for th e po int position wh ile Su mmers had moved u p to third on the course and co n tinued to lead on elapsed time. ' The race for th e overa ll win settled down over the next ho ur as the front three held their positions. A li ttl e further back Lojak, Conner and Plessinge r were closing as they ran in forma tio n. Su mmers made a serious cha rge on lap seven and entered the spectator viewin g area before his 250cc-mounted cha llengers. Then disaster struck Su m me rs' effo rt when hi s H o nd a XR600 gro und to a halt wh en the ignition fai led just .abo ve the checkpoint. By th e tim e the event ended an hour later, a discouraged Summers had already left the facility . Andrews ma de the next move to the front, dis p lacing Cun ningha m after the halfway mark a nd o pe ni ng a comfortable 34-second lead after eigh t laps. But that appeared to bethe end for Andrews' o verall efforts . Having already ridden four ti mes longer than he does in the MX National s, Andrews began to b u ckl e under th e h eat. Cunningham passed him for the lead one lap later and put nearly a minute o n the fading Andrews. The focus for the overa ll win began to cen ter on Lojak, who had one minute of elapsed time to work with as he became the overall leader based on ela psed time . " I tried to pick up the pa ce after Summers dropped out," said Lojak, who missed ' the first two months of the season with a broken wrist. " I had been pacing myself all day and then I took off at the two-hour mark. At one point I was within 20 seconds of Cunningham, but I guess I came on 'too strong, too soon. My wrist got sore and at the end I couldn 't hold on anymore; I had to ,back down just to , finish." After Lojak's fai led charge, Cunningham got the two-lap signal while holding a two-minute lead on Lojak, Andrews an d a charging Plessinger. With just one lap to go , Plessinger was past Andrews and had evened out his time differential with Lojak before his bike began to seize. "A ring stuck on me there at the end and the bike started seizing," said Plessinger: " It kept me from beating Eddie." The 14th and final lap was a forma li ty as Cu nnin gham continued to cruise o u t front wit h two minutes to spare. Plessinger crossed the finis h line second, but Lojak was just six seconds beh ind wh ich allowed him to overtake Plessin ger on adj usted tim e for second overall. An drews wa s a no the r 35 secon ds beh ind wi th Conner all alone in fifth after recovering fro m a crash o n lap 10. R ussell , accompan ied by his second fla t tire of the da y, held on to sixth 'overa ll with Doug Blackwell holding down seventh at the finish. Eig hth overall was captured by 200cc A class winner Craig J o nes, who ran away with the class win. The BT Racing / Yo ko h am a / Answer/ Maier/ Sil kol ene-backed rider blas ted into the lead on the firs t lap an d stayed ah ead of the cla ss all the way to the finish line. Rival Tom Norton did a good jo b of ho lding the frantic pace but he couldn't keep Jones in sight. Jones won by just under two minutes and Norton was second in the class an d 10th overa ll behind Frank Keegan . Tim Sh epard finished II th overall, while Davey Coombs notched his fifth straigh t Junior +25 class win at 12th overall afte r being challenged by Dave Santi and David Molnar. The top Four-Stroke A class rider was Harvey Whitaker, who completed 13 laps on the way to his second class win of the series. Rick Parsons and

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