VOL. 50 ISSUE 44 NOVEMBER 5, 2013
P51
ALS
Briefly...
STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK KARIYA
N
ick Fahringer kept his strong late-season run going to take
a commanding win at the 37th running of the Moose Run,
presented by Moose Racing, the ninth and final round of
the Parts Unlimited Off-road Motorcycle and ATV (OMA) Nationals.
The AirGroup/Radiant Racing Husaberg rider dueled for the first
half of the race with Husaberg's Russell Bobbitt, who locked up
the series crown for the first time at round eight, with Bobbitt considering himself lucky to hang on for second place after a sticking
throttle troubled him over the last half of the race.
Nick Fahringer
ran off with
his first victory
at the Moose
Run.
The winningest rider in Moose Run
history (having started that streak
on a Penton in 1977 when the race
was known as the Illinois State
Cross-country
Championship),
Jeff Fredette couldn't pass up the
chance to ride what were likely the
best riding conditions ever for the
event. Unfortunately, his KX250F expired while he was running easily in
the top 20.
Originally laid out as a 50-mile loop
to be done twice, the course had to
be shortened six miles when some
of the cornfields to be used weren't
harvested in time. Rain on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday made
things a little sloppy in places for the
ATVs on Saturday, but things dried
out just enough to make the rich peat
soil and clay in the area just about
perfect.
Former 30-39 A champ Steve Leivan has spent this year running
Open A and enjoyed a healthy lead
in points over Darren Carlson going
into the Moose Run, 171-126, so he
bumped up to Pro 2. While running
comfortably in the top 10 of the class
by his reckoning, however, Leivan
crashed hard and knocked himself
out momentarily. He was credited
with 13th out of 22 in the class.
While local racers from Illinois and
Iowa made up the bunch of the entries over the weekend, the Moose
Run took on a fairly international flavor. Besides Jason Thomas from
Wales and Goncalo Reis of Portugal, no fewer than 21 Polish enthusiasts who live in the Chicago area
made their presence known in the A,
B and C classes.
