Crozy Horse Cdmpground
r.oke
Howosu Ciry, AZ
OFF.ROAD
Rockg Mountain Ary/MC
World
Off-Road Championship s€ni€s
The tough
course clqimed mony bikes, in.luding Deslry
Abbott,5,
Ryqn Hughes, who chooses not to
weqr
o drink system, tokes o swig {rom
o
woler
botlle
en
route
lo o fhird-ploce finish.
Garrison fell. Two corners later,
Brett fell,
so it
gave
the lead right to me. lwas real-
Iy smart and
patient.
and the race
came to
me."
Alessi
couldn't shake anyone in
the
lead
pack,
however, which quickly pulled
away from
the
rest
of the field.
"Me,
Alessi,
lvletcalfe and Garrison
were all
pushing,''
Dietrich
said.
"We
were back and forth. We had
a
good pace
going.
lstarted looking around
and we
were checking out! I was like,
'Where'd
ever/body gol'
Garrison tipped over,
Metcalfe
tipped over, and
[then]
it was
iust
me and Alessi."
The sophomore Pro off-road racer
wasn't intimidated,
however, and claimed
to feel comfortable
at that
pace.
"lAlessi]
was
going pretty
fast
in the hard-packed
stuff,"
Dietrich said,
"and
it
seemed like
whenever we
got
to
the sand or the tech-
nical
part,
it felt like I had a little
bit of an
advantaSe. Actually,
I tried making
a cou-
ple passes.
I'd
get
really close
to him. He
was
getting
a little squirrely. lt was
cool;
it
felt like lwas
pushing
him a little bit in the
sand."
Alessi said
that
he
was trying to
pace
himsell
''l
think I was nvo notches slower
than a National
pace,"
Alessi
said.
"l
was
trying to
pace
myself
allthe waythrough."
Dietrich crashed and lost
contact with
Alessi, and a flat tire dropped him further
back
tg
an
eventual sixth-place finish.
The
race then
became a &vo-man
show with Alessi leading
nearly the
entire
way, l''letcalfe officially taking
over for one
lap
just
after the midway
point,
though he
had at least one
other stint at the front
later
on.
"l
kn€w my
pit
stop would be a lot
longer than
the other
guys,
because I did-
n't have a
quick-fill
deal,"
Metcalfe
said.
"So
I wanted
to
pass
and
pull
a lead so I
Chris
Johnson smoked the Semi-Pro
