Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

· Open Letter l\merican Club rider Dave Wolfe recalls his adventure in this year's Czech Republic Six Days By many to keep up for the 185-mile days. Then, when it started to rain later in the week, it became brutal. .. " PHOTOS BY KIT PALMER AND MIKE KLINGER I f you've ever wondered what it's like to ride the International Six Days Enduro, you might want to read this open letter from Dave Wolfe, who just came back from the Czech Republic with a silver medal in hand. Here's a word of warning, however, you might want to have a bottle of Advil handy, because your muscles will be aching after you're {inished reading this ************* "Well everybody, we made it back from another ISDE, this one in a beautiful but cold and rainy Czech Republic. "In a nutshell, this event was much more difficult than last year's ISDE in France. France was a dual sport ride in comparison to this year's Czech Republic Six Days. Like last year, though, there was not much "trail." The organizers planned a lot of the event using fields and routes that were fun and easy, but they tried to' eliminate riders by running a speed average that made it impossible for 60 NOVEMBER 13, 2002' cue I Ruts were deep in the Czech Republic. as Dave Wolfe finds out. OAV ONE DAVE WOLFE the famous "Isle Of Man Gang" couldn't even cruise around like normal ISDE events, entertaining people along the way. After my police encounter, I heard the police harassing Paul Edmonson and threatening to impound his Husky due to his belligerence, and he just looked at them and said, "Go ahead, take the bloody thing, it's not mine anyway." I bet the police are still partying with the money they collected in fines for that week. "But the real bummer of the day wasn't so much the money but the fact that the organizer decided to throw out all of the route points for the first day, so we pretty much beat ourselves up for nothing!" "Many riders collected as many as 35 to 40 trail points trying to keep up on day one. A couple of us rode really hard and had single digits - I had three - and it pretty much looked like the week would be a balance between keeping a fast pace on the trail and not getting caught speeding in towns. I got shot with photo radar doing 109 km/hr in a 50 but missed the record, that honor went to JD Hammock who got busted for doing 115km. This addition to my various list of moving violations cost me a whopping 1000 KCI With the conversion rate at 30 KC to the U.S. dollar, this cost me ... oh, $33.34. Not too bad, I guess. "I heard that the policie were "renta-cops" from Germany, and they were killing us with fines for helmet violations, failure to provide international driver's licenses, speeding and just about anything else they could think of. The Aussies had 26 moving violations by the end of day one and n e _ s e OAVTWO "The second day was still mostly dry, meaning that it didn't rain "too much," and the organizers gave us 14 additional minutes for an easier time schedule. This helped somewhat, but from the day-one 'Hare Scrambles,' the route deteriorated and became extremely rough and rutted. We pretty much all crashed during the day. Ron [Schmelzle] got cross-rutted in fifth gear and took a few soU samples. I had a few occasions where I was frantically trying to stay on time, and one second I was going straight ahead, and the next I was full broadside headed for the trees, usually with my' bars in my thighs. "Then there was a neat section where we had to ride 25 vertical feet down a set of steep - and I mean steep - old rocky stairs, with a rock wall on the right side, a small landing in the middle, and then a four-foot landing pad at the bottom, where you had to stop and make a 90-degree right turn on a piece of sheet metal, which was like riding on ice. Then, add the fact that the stairs had mud all over them; it made it just that much more fun. Let's just say that I saw more than a few riders upside down at the bottom of the stairs. "The tests for day one and two were technical and interesting. Many were run on portions of small motocross tracks and had been used in the past for World Enduro rounds. There were places where they had old berms and ruts that they used to make things difficult by flagging strange lines at acute angles across the ruts. The tests were a lot of fun, but again, they deteriorated very quickly with 500-plus riders pounding them twice a day. Lines were tough. We all had a hard time trying to figure out if the rut - which usually had whoops in it - was the fast line, or if going outside and across was better. Ron was able to see guys like David Fretigne and Marc Germain, and he said, "They stay in the ruts and use their bikes like ski poles in a slalom course." This type of attack did not work at all for me and nearly led to a couple of bad high-side crashes." OAV THREE "Day three was what the ISDE is all about. It was raining, but not too hard. The trail was somewhat more difficult, as we headed to the Northeast of Jablonec nad Nissou, which took us much closer to Poland. This is where there are many small ski areas and higher elevations. It rained pretty much the entire duration of the event in this region, and this is where the real challenge began. "All of the tests were on difficult side-hills and were very slick. There was one that was on a 1400 verticalfoot ski hill that was fairly steep even by skiing standards! It went down one side and back up' the other, and just walking the test a couple days before had left Ron, Billy, David Knight and me sweating and gasping for breath, while Peggy pounded up the hill in front of us. This test, even

• Cover