Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

eOFF·ROAD e AMA National Championship Reliability Enduro Series: Final round Rod ney Smi th earned his fourth overall win of .the series an d w rapped up his first-ever Na tional Championship titl e. Three-time N ati on al Hare 8< Hou n d Champi on Danny Ham el, he re leading Steve Ha tch, finished third overall. ov erall. Th e KLX650 four-stroke rider won the Open Four-Stroke div ision . He finished jus t three seconds behind Hatch and Rhod es. Eighth overall went to 250cc rider Scott McL aughlin, ninth to the 350cc Four-S troke class winner Chad Carlisle, and 10th to Rick Edzarth, a 250cc class rider. Twelve riders from Hawaii competed at Trask and the long trip paid off for at least one of the m - Phil Oveland, w ho topped the 125cc class w ith a 13th overall ride. Josh Ch andler won th e 500c c cla ss over Steve Silvestri and Robert Johnson, and Gre g Lykke aced the Senior (Over40) di vis ion , endi ng Mark Rupl e' s win streak. The heavy rains that fell in this comer of Oregon during the week p rior to the event seemingly presaged a slic k and muddy event. However, the area dried u p considerably and the riders were blessed wi th completely dust-free trails . The trail pa ce wa s set fairly easy, with riders having around three minutes free time at the checks on the first day, and more than twice that mu ch on day two . By comparison to the previous rou nds in Idaho and Washington, the course was quite open, without any especially difficult obstacle s. The riders completed two identical loops each day, with one 14mile cou rse ridd en at the outset of the main loops on day one. On the first day they rode about 130 miles and around 90 miles on the second day before impoun ding their motorcycles prior to running the traditional Trask grass track final MX special test in the afternoon. The first te rrain test on Saturday immediately established the running order. Rodney Smith, on his FMF/Race Tech /RK Chain /UNJ/Pro-Taper/BeIRay /Braking/ Powerbar / Sl a v e n' s Racing /Motors/DeVol/l00%-backed Suzuki RMX25O, dominated with a time almost 20 seconds quicker than that turned in by Hamel, and approxima tely 30 seconds quicker than scores recorded by Davis, McLaughlin, Rhodes and Roeseler. Dan Harte, who led the 350cc FourStroke class at the end of the firs t da y, desc ribed the test and his battle against the clock: "It wa s tight, rocky and dark. You couldn't see the gro u nd very well but I think I got through it okay. I was fast enough to lead th e class, but jus t barely. Chad Carlisle is just one po int and Jon King .is only four poin ts behind me." Rodne Smith tackles Trask Two-DarBy M ike T huleen YAMHILL, OR, JUNE 26-27 eam Suzuki's Rodney Smith recorded his fourth win of the six-round series and with it wrapped up the championship at the Trask Mo untain Two-Day ISDE Qua lifier. Smith carded the quickest times in every special test, as well as finishing ahead of all challengers in the final MX special test. Steve Hatch and David Rhodes, both of whom tied for fifth overall, completed a Team Suzuki sweep of r 22 . the top three overall positions in the series final point standings. A couple of Kawasaki Tea m Green riders emerged from th e cac tus-lin ed trails of Baja and the swam ps of the Blackwater 100 to record respecta ble finishes at Trask. Ty Davis and three-time Hare & Hound N at iona l Cha m p io n Danny Hamel finished second and third overa ll, respectively. Team Suzuki's Chris Smith, a member of the winning U.S. Junior World Trophy team in Czechoslovakia in 1991, raged in the final MX special test to finish fourth overall. Hatch and Rhodes both accumulated the same amount of points to share ru th overall, making the first six places filled by riders on 250ccmotorcycles. The firs t non-250cc class rider was Team Green's Larry Roeseler in seventh Ha tch was un charact eristically - for him - absent from the top grou p of riders after da y one. "I did a big flip about 300 feet from the finish o f the firs t test," Hatch explained. Some of the riders experienced a d iffe re n t ki nd of prob lem in th e test. A number of riders comp lained about confusing ribbons that they thought marked the end of the test. As a result, some of the competitors slowed down before the test actually ended: Th e se con d time through the same test resulted in even more confu sion and seve ral protests were filed, once again. " Th e en d of th e fir st te st wasn't marked very well so yo u didn't know when to stop riding hard," said Roeseler. "So that caused problems in the second test where there was a group of people out in the woods similar to the first test and a bunch of riders stopped (thinking th at these peop le were club me mbe rs record ing each rid er's time thro ugh the test). So, to make it fair, they threw the second test out. " As it turned out, the "people" that Roeseler wa s referring to were the children of club members who were taking down times farther up the trail. The kids were playing cards on a portable table. Ron Laws on, who was competing in the Open class and w ho didn't have a

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