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HARE &HOUND AMA NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP HARE &HOUND SERIES Round 3: Shawn Gerber Memorial Hare and Hound Kawasaki Team Green's Destry Abbott posted his . flrst-ever National Hare & Hound victory, In Utah. Sy Anne Van Severen Photos by Tom Van Severen DELTA, UT, APR. 4 now fell on the racers and cut an entire loop out of round three of the AMA National Champions 'p Hare & Hound Series, held near ...... Delta, Utah, but it was a day in the sun . -< I-< for Kawasaki's Destry Abbott. 0.. The Kawasaki Team Green racer battled handlebar to handlebar with Ty Davis in the first half of the race, then used the extra top end of his KX500 to I < 20 outrun tbe Yamaha pilot on the fast roads of loop two. When the race was over, Abbott was ahead by a bike length and had taken the first overall win of his National Hare & Hound career. . "Coming into the finish, it was really tough because we caught lappers, and Davis was really back on me, but I made it and I'm just so happy," Abbott said. "Besides the qualifier (a special-test win at last year's 1SDE in Italy), this is my first really big win. It feels great." With three different winners in the first three rounds of competition, this year's seven-race Hare & Hound series is a far cry from the easy-tocall foregone conclusions of years gone by. (Dan Smith dominated the event for the first five years, Danny Hamel won it five times in a row, and Ty Davis took six out of seven events last year.) But what a difference a new season makes. With one race to go before the summer hiatus, the points race is still way too close to call and, with less than 100 yards deciding ti:'e win in two of the three events run so far, the only prediction that anybody is making is that the racing will be fast, fUrious and close all year long. Round three of the Hare & Hound series was supposed to be a three-loop, 1DB-mile race through the desert and mountain terrain near Delta, about 120 miles south of Salt Lake City, but snow in the days leading up to the event scratched the final loop and cut the event to a little over 74 miles. A large field of around 300 riders left the line when the banner dropped at 11:15 a.m. and it was full speed ahead through the infamous sand dunes that gave the Little Sahara riding area its name. "We like to run them through the sand because it gives them a chance to get straightened out," said Preston Gel'ber of the Sage Riders Me. The race, officially known as the Shawn Gerber Memorial Hare & Hound, was in its 10th and final year as a memorial to Gerber's son, who died as a result of complications from the flu. Round-one winner Ty Davis led the way as the front-runners passed th'e bomb and picked up the start of the ribboned traiL KTM-mounted Nick Pearson was in second, and Abbott was holding his own in third. Pearson powered past Davis shortly after the bomb, and it was Pearson, Davis and Abbott, followed by Paul Krause, Todd Hoy, 250cc-mounted Ed Sorenson, roundtwo winner Brian Brown, and Gas Gi:\s racer Greg Zitterkopf at the 4-mile mar~. '1 had the early lead, but Pearson got by me - pretty much outpowered me"_ then we followed him for a long time, just the three of us: Pearson, me and Abbott," Davis said. "There was nO . dust. Everybody just keyed off the lead guy, and we had a really good race." Dan Richardson, who took the Vetclass win in rounds one and two of th,e series, was not having anything that resembled a really good race. "That was the worst start I've probably gotten in five years," said Rit:hardson, shaking his head,. "I missed the kickstarter when they dropped the ban-