VOL. 52 ISSUE 12 MARCH 24, 2015 P83
as fast as possible and shut
the door on Haaker's pass at-
tempt. Brown swept around
the start straight, over the
first-turn tree, over one last
log and across the finish line
tire jump to take the win.
Haaker came across in
second for the second time
this season and Max Ger-
ston held on to third in what
should be considered a
breakout ride by the Endu-
roCross-focused Arizonian.
Seconds behind Gerston
was Webb in fourth overall
after battling past the entire
field. Fifth place went to Cory
Graffunder on his SRT Offroad-
sponsored KTM.
Brown's impressive perfor-
mance was the first for him
in over a year of competition
and the fourth main event win
all-time for the soft-spoken and
hard-riding Tennessean. The
victory was also the first for the
full factory effort of a resur-
gent and powerful Husqvarna
brand.
"The start was the whole
race," Brown said. "If I would
have started in third or fourth
place it would have been re-
ally hard for me to be up here
even if I could have—probably
not—these guys are fast and
they caught up to me when I
got tight and rode a little cau-
tious at the end. I haven't won
since the year before last when
Taddy [Blazusiak] and I were
battling and that was even in
the beginning of that season
so it's been almost two years."
"I just wanted to shut the
door in that second turn and
Cody (Webb) didn't want to let
me and we just collided," said
Haaker of his race. "He was on
the inside but I had a wheel. He
felt like he was there, I'm sure.
Both of us felt like neither one
should shut down and that's
what it really came down to. I
managed to get myself back up
faster and squirt out of there. I
started moving forward, riding
consistent and caught up to
Brown at the last lap of the race
and we ran out of laps."
"There wasn't much going
on before I went down," Webb
said. "I had a good jump and
hit the first log and finish line
jump and had the inside into
the second corner. Colton
was outside and I thought to
myself that I could just take the
corner and pin it inside and he
thought the same so we hit and
went down and I went down
pretty hard into all those logs.
I couldn't get up because ev-
Briefly...
notion on its head (and some of its
riders). Nathan Brown took the win
in Utah over Michael Salsman and
Keith Adams. While TrialsCross rid-
ers make a lot of the obstacles look
easy—they're used to going vertical
and balancing for days, after all—the
head-to-head format always leads to
great racing. And, you can almost al-
ways count on Keith Adams to ride
without gloves and get out front for a
while. Pretty awesome for a racer in
his 60s!
The Women's class
front-runners race
through the unique
downhill Matrix. Shelby
Turner (50), Sandra
Gomez (93) and Lexi
Pechout mixed it up in
the top-three all night.
