Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

teams, among them the Kawasaki duo of Terry Hahn and Roy Nafzger, who were using their Exxon Valdezsized fuel tank to good advantage, taking the lead, even against Team Fredette and its quick-fill jugs. All we could do was the best we could do, Grand National dirt-tracker J.R. Schnabel (32) assumed this attitude around much of the course. Thanks to his frenzied riding, the author and two other lucky blokes rode Schnabel's coattans to a third-place overall finish. keeping skills through the trees, Fredette is a big-time ice guru who supplements his income by building the specialized tires required to negotiate the slippery surface at a spirited pace without busting the 01' keister. Typical rear tires will have as many as 1200 of the razor sharp hex-heads screwed in place and tuned by hand to achieve the optimum angles for the best traction when the bike is at a given attitude. Compared to the rears, front tires are cinch to build; they only take about 800 screws. ••••••••• *** •• **** •• All the screws in the world didn't save me from doing a double-axle faceplant in practice, however. Race organizers Gordon Lunde Sr., Jim Sumner and tavern owner Tom Gimmer laid out a serpentine course of about one mile in length, down from the nearly three-miler that they usually plow. The reason was simple: the ice wasn't all that thick in some spots, like over near the last turn before the finish-line straightaway. Despite the construction of a snowbank to act as an ersatz guardrail, a miscue at speed could have seen some hapless rider become an unwiUing member of the polar bear club. Maybe that's what I was thinking about when I came barreling down into that section during practice. Whatever the reason, I lost the front end, doing my best impression of a 250-pound sliding and clean-and-jerk maneuver before giving up and accepting the inevitable. It was at that time that I learned rule number one in ice racing: Ice is hard. Scott Schnabel had attempted to instruct that point by way of example when I noticed him fitting some of those elbow pads that look more like knee pucks than elbow pads before we went out for practice. "What are you using those for?" "Ice is harrrrd," came the response in that typical Midwestern accent. To which I responded in the typical fashion of the grasshopper with many lessons left to learn. "What are you, some kind of a puss or something?" As I rode slowly back to our pit area, my throbbing left elbow seemed to be taunting me with that very same question. So our plan was to let J.R. do most of the work, as the kid is an absolute master on a frozen lake. I think it has something to do with the old man dropping him through holes in the ice to chum for Muskee when he was a baby ... or something like that. While he still has a lot of room to grow as a professional dirt-tracker (and I'm positive he will), if the Grand National Championship were held in Winter, J.R. Schnabel might already be mentioned in the same breath as Scott Parker and Jay Springsteen. Yep, he was gonna be our ringer, with Uncle Scott, young Janisch and me filling in where we could to give him a rest. For simplicity's sake, the race organizers run just three classes: Lightweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight, according to your standard displacement breaks. We were entered in Middlweight, as we had elected to ride the Janisch's DTX'd '97 Honda CR250. The race is started in waves, with the Heavyweight guys going first, Middleweight second and Ughtweight third. Our bid for the win didn't start too well, as J.R. jumped on the bike first, and hope. For a 13-year-old munch kin - the youngest rider in the field by far Jesse waded out onto the course and displayed the smoothness and determination that might someday earn him a Grand National number of his own. Sure, he got passed here and there, but he was hardly doing us any serious damage. That's more than his competition could say at last year's AMA Dirt Track Grand Championships, where he absolutely dominated the 80cc classes on the half mile after laying off for a year to pursue an amateur motocross career that - from what I hear - will likely take him nowhere. Lately, though, he has been heard to voice thoughts toward dirt track and road racing. And he mentions Nicky Hayden's name a lot more. Smart kid. Smart, but not quite strong enough to tough it out for very long, leaving me to wonder what his deal was when he came through the pits after only about 15 minutes of ice time and handed the bike off to me. It didn't take long to find out exactly what the deal was, though. With the constant chizzling of 64 sets of churning, studded ice tires, the course had morphed from the fast and smooth scrambles track of practice into something more resemblant to a snowy white motocross course. Instead of smooth ice, rutted "berms" had formed in every comer, even in the faster sweepers, forcing you to either white knuckle it and follow them or attempt to find a way to cross them. he was on the course - just look for the ice drifts off in the distance. It didn't take long before he began eating into what was a healthy lead by Fredette. Maybe a tenth here, a hundredth there, but he started coming. Fredette, meanwhile, took no heed of the advance, and it was qUickly apparent why he earned his ISDE medals. He is the absolute picture of smoothness and energy conversation, necessary skills when riding all-day stages in foreign lands. It pays on the ice, too, as Schnabel got within about two seconds of Fredette some 50 minutes into the race before his let-itall-hang-out riding style started to take its toll. That was our cue, and we signaled him in. Like I said before, though it is mostly for fun, the Steel Shoe is already beginning to gain a certain amount of prestige in the ice racing community, more for what the race represents than anything. But for just a bunch of guys who wanted to come and participate, our minute-long fuel stop/rider changeovers weren't too shabby. Furthermore, some guys were absolutely blazing through the pits when they came in - a strict nono. That would later be to our benefit, as some teams were penalized laps for each infraction. Still, by the time we sent little Janisch out for his stint, we had already lost serious ground to several (Left to right! Scott Rousseau, Steve Janisch, Scott Schnabel, Jesse Janisch, Glen Schnabel Sr. and J.R. Schnabel celebrate an uncertain victory. Although the omclal scoring would catch up with them, the team's enthusiasm over a great ride for a good cause was not diminished. got a great start from the last row and then crashed in a heap while challenging for second place in the second tum. Ahh well. At least when he came in later, we could joke about it. "I figured I was second, and I didn't want you guys to get your hopes up, so I fell down," he would later tell me. But it was what he did before telling me that which was most impressive. With the demeanor of your average hurricane, Schnabel attacked the course with a vengeance, immediately picking off riders, sometimes three and four at a time, finding lines that nobody else was even thinking about. The joke was that you could always tell where c U a •• n e _ S • FEBRUARY 14. 2001 35

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