AM AINa t io n a l C h a m p io n s h ip E n d u r o S e r ie s
R o u n d 9 : Little Brown .Jug
Raines Th rottles Up_
Jason Raines takes the "Jug,"
but Mike Lafferty takes the cup
By
G EORGE V ILL A N YI
P HOTO S BY K E N N ET H K ING
CUNTON, SC, AUG. 31
t appea rs that Jason Rain es is final ly b ack up to full spe ed foll owing
the leg in ju ry he suffered last year,
and he proved this by riding to a very
im pre ssiv e victory at the Little Brown
Jug Na tional Enduro in South Carolina. A s if wi n ning a National Enduro
i s n ' t i m p r e s s i ve e n o u g h, Ra ines
a c c omplished this fea t i n only his
thi rd enduro ever. Rid ing on the same
min ute as Ran dy Hawkins and w ithout an end uro c o m p ute r , Ra in es let
Haw kins do all of the t imekeep ing ,
and Hawk ins let Raines do th e serious
th rottle twi sting . Th e plan worked o ut
- at le ast for Rain es - as he let a fivepoint scorecard do all of th e t alking
at the end of th e enduro . As it turned
out, those five points we re m ore than
eno ugh to give him his first N ati onal
End uro vi ctory in o n ly h is th ird tr y .
Raines had a three-po int cush io n over
fellow Yamaha rid er Barry Hawk and
K TM 's Mik e Lafferty , w h o each
I
60
S EPTEM BER 17,20 0 3 '
cue
I
e
naVY's
dropped eight points over the course
of the day.
So , as you c an se e , it looks like
Rain es is back to h is o ld self aga in .
But Ra ines wasn 't the on ly rid er
making th e head lines t oday, as he
shared some of the spotlight with La~
ferty , who c li nc h ed his sixth AMA
National Enduro Championship. His
conservative third p la ce on the day
was more th an enough to g ive him
the champ ionsh ip and tie h im w ith
Hawkins for third place on the all time National Enduro title list. Dick
Burl eson tops the list with eight titl es,
and B ill B aird is second w ith seven
titles .
The Littl e Brown Jug Nati onal
Enduro wa s hosted by the Gre enville
Tra il Rid er s. As usual, it was a tough
enduro . T hey used o ver 66 mil es of
trail , whi ch included five long t ests
that took po ints from the participants.
These trails through the National Fo rest have been us ed repeatedl y over
the last 50 years and have be come
quite rough , making it imposs ibl e fo r
the riders to maintain the 24 -mileper-hour sp eed average deemed by
