VOL. 52 ISSUE 38 SEPTEMBER 22, 2015 P103
times among the top three (him,
Sipes and Australia's Daniel
Milner) the rest of the week,
earning him a spot on the first
row to start each morning.
At that point, the only thing
left for Team USA to shoot for
was keeping Sipes ahead in the
overall individual standings.
"Basically after [Duvall went
out], I told all the riders after the
first test, now we're just going
for the individual results and take
this as a good practice and also
we're putting all the focus on
helping Ryan Sipes to hopefully
win the overall," Kallonen said.
"Taylor Robert did very well to-
day—he finished second overall.
It doesn't show on the [current]
results because it shows three
hours for Taylor until the appeal
goes through. But we kept track
and he finished second overall
and he will start on the first min-
ute tomorrow with Ryan—Ryan
won today. So he'll be helping
Ryan in terms of maybe going
in first in the special tests to get
one tire mark [down] because
it'll be slippery tomorrow [morn-
ing]. That kind of thing, we can
help Ryan with so we're going
to do that, then everyone else is
just trying their best, taking it as
a practice from now on."
In the end, Robert did his job
which assisted Sipes in becom-
ing the first American to top the
overall individual rankings at Six
Days, Sipes capping off his stel-
lar week by winning the final E2
Briefly...
up in Slovakia not to compete but to
work—for the Slovakian organizers!
Actually, longtime friend Jan Hrehor
from Slovakia invited Hawkins to join
him as a course marshal so they and
others took off well before the start
to ride the course and make sure
things were good to go. They also
doffed their marshal bibs at times to
maintain a low profile and look for
any rule infractions.
An apparent allergic reaction caused
Taylor Robert's right eye to swell al-
most shut at the end of day five. "It
didn't affect me riding and I honestly
don't know what caused it; it just
started swelling up!"
