With 128 bikes on the line and a long straightaway ahead, the LMS start did have a slight desert bomb run start feel.
Has the American off-road racer gone soft? It could be true if you look at the results of the second running of Red Bull's Last Man Standing in Bulcher, Texas. After all, no Americans managed to finish this one-off "extreme" event; the only two official finishers were KTM's David Knight from the Isle of Man and his friend from Great Britain, Wayne Braybrook.
While not all of America's best answered the call in north Texas, there was still plenty of home-grown talent. Guys like Russell Bobbitt, who not only won the 2006 AMA/FMF Racing National Enduro Championship but also was part of the four-man American squad that took top honors in New Zealand's ISDE by winning the FIM Junior World Trophy, found himself humbled. So did Nathan Woods, the two-time WORCS champ, and Geoff Aaron, 10-time AMA/NATC National Observed Trials Champion. Then there were rock-solid regional heroes like Steve Leivan (who's got something like 15 Missouri state hare scrambles championships), young Texan and last year's final finisher, Cole Kirkpatrick, Canadian ISDE World Trophy team member, Cory Graffunder, former MX champ Guy Cooper and even eight-time AMA National Enduro champ Dick Burleson. In all, 128 riders showed up to the Red River Motorcycle Trails area to test themselves in what has become the most difficult off-road race in the country.
The smart money was on Knight who'll be racing full-time in the U.S. next year as he leads KTM's GNCC effort. After all, "Knighter" won the inaugural edition of Last Man Standing with ease and he'd been on a tear since then winning every round of the World Enduro Championships as the repeating Enduro 3-class champ as well as a number of other extreme races. The only loss came at the EnduroCross in Las Vegas two weeks before LMS. He was reported to be so ill he considered not riding but gave it a go and ended up a solid third.
Nick Fahringer works on getting his bike into position so enduro champ Russell Bobbitt can help pull it up the rest of the way. For most in the field, teamwork was the only way to survive.
Another report claimed that Red Bull's higher-ups in Austria believed that the race should more accurately reflect its name and be considerably more difficult than last year when 12 finished. Knight joked, "I like winding people up. I said to (the organizers) last year, 'That was a bit easy, that.'"
So, former U.S. ISDE racers Brian Storrie and Josh Whitaker laid out a far more difficult 40-mile course, one that took Storrie four hours and 15 minutes to complete when he did final recon on it a few days before the race after all the sections were in place.
That was when it was dry.
A cold front swept through the area two days before the race, leaving three inches of snow and ice in its wake as well as dozens of accidents on the roads. Though the storm moved on quickly, it left the course very soggy with the wet clay promising to increase the difficulty factor. Also, due to the fact that several entrants had to ride out the storm and delay their arrival, organizers opted to forgo the qualifying races. The 128 who finally showed up were all guaranteed a spot on the starting line - at least for the daytime lap.
Another bit of event tweaking came in the form of the format. Unlike last year's format, this year's LMS consisted of a single 40-mile lap in the day, with the top finishers advancing to the night program where the same 40-mile lap was done in the opposite direction. Also, riders could not receive outside assistance except in the case of safety issues. The only help a rider could receive was from other entrants.
It was no surprise to see Knight gallop straight to the front of the pack on his 250 XC after the Civil War-style cannon thundered, indicating the racers to start their bikes and fly down the undulating, grass-covered start straight in mimic a desert race's bomb run. After that the course was simply one off-road challenge after another with four special sections or "elements" thrown in for spectator and television interest.
Knight needed a bit of help from Cooper to conquer one vertical ledge early in the race, but after that nothing stopped him. He might've been slowed down a bit and had to try twice on a couple obstacles, but for the most part the 27-year-old former trials rider made it look easy - quite a contrast to those behind.
Geoff Aaron put his 10 AMA/NATC National Observed Trials Series championships to good use in conjunction with his borrowed Christini Honda CRF250R. Unfortunately, the bike suffered terminal engine problems almost within sight of the finish while he was in position to qualify for the night lap.
If they had a bad start, even the best of the pack found themselves in trouble nearly immediately. Just two miles out, riders came to a gully section where the course dropped into and climbed out of five times. With the muddy conditions, it quickly turned into parking lot full of overheated bikes and frantic, frustrated riders whose day ended there.
New to the KTM team after winning the Semi-Pro championship in WORCS, Justin Soule reported, "I didn't get a good start; I came through the first 'rodeo-cross' (spectator section) in 72nd and I got into 11th before the first check. Then I moved into eighth, and I held that until Triple Threat."
Triple Threat was probably the most severe of the elements with its tricky climbs made even more challenging in the mud. Only Knight negotiated it without having to pick his bike up, relying on both speed and trials technique, but he did need two tries.
Nonetheless, Knight performance was the best there and everywhere else. Despite the trying conditions, he not only finished the day lap by miles over Braybrook and Cooper, he completely smashed pre-race estimates, completing the course in an astounding 2:34:54. That was 24 minutes ahead of Braybrook and his Gas Gas EC 250 and about 45 minutes ahead of Cooper, who chose to ride a borrowed KTM 250 SX.
When only a couple more finished within an hour of Knight, organizers doubled the allowable timeframe. Thus, 11 qualified for the night lap. Shortly after the sun went down, the cannon blasted for the second time and Knight again went straight to the front. This time, he proved to be even more dominant and gained a huge advantage early. Besides for Knight, only Braybrook proved capable of tackling the terrain solo. The remaining riders used teamwork, as the unwritten you-help-me-and-I'll-help-you pact was the only way they could surmount each obstacle. Even then, the chase pack dwindled in size and strength.
"My energy was pretty much all used up on my day loop," Cooper admitted. "I thought Day Five at Six Days was the hardest day of my life on a motorcycle, but this definitely tops it!" Graffunder exclaimed. "This was just unbelievably hard."
The night lap started just after the sun went down, but it differed little from the day start with Knight shooting into the lead right away.
The diminished chase pack reached the Joshua Tree element roughly halfway around the circuit when officials told them to head directly back to the pits. They were a reported two hours behind Knight at that point, and he and Braybrook had already finished with Knight's time 3:15:33.
"I was pretty happy when they stopped us," 18-year-old Kyle Redmond admitted. "Besides these two guys (Knight and Braybrook), it was all of us together, all five of us were helping each other. It wasn't really like a race; it was just kind of a survival contest."
Graffunder revealed, "At the time when they pull you off, it's a huge relief because you're so spent; you have absolutely nothing left. I'm sure I could've ridden the rest and could've finished, but... When they pull you off, it's a huge sigh of relief that you can actually ride back to the trailer and you know that you're done, you know you got fourth place overall. You're done.
"I was definitely dreading that last part, riding the other way up some of those ledges and thinking about having to drop off them later when you're so tired. It wasn't going to be a pretty picture. I was glad that it was done."
"Knight is absolutely a hero," Cooper declared. "I have so much respect for him. For him to finish (so far in front) is no doubt... there's just nobody else that would've been able to do that." Air Time's 3-4 placings gave him third overall, though he wasn't conferred official finisher status. Graffunder was fourth with his 4-5 while Bobbitt earned fifth overall with an 8-3.
A five-foot-tall vertical wall carved out of a bank was the final obstacle facing competitors, but only Knight and Braybrook put tracks on it.
But even Knight admitted to the physical and technical challenges, saying, "I'll need to sleep for a couple days now. That's harder than Erzberg (extreme rally in Austria), that was. Definitely.
"It was totally different," he continued. "Last year was dry and dusty, and this year was very slippery clay. It was like two different races, to be honest, but I enjoyed this. I feel like it was worth all that, now, to finish-Wayne as well. We both got to the finish, and you definitely appreciate getting through everything. You think back and you think, 'Gee, how the hell did I get up that?'"
"It definitely tested you to the limit." A visibly tired Braybrook declared, "This is the hardest event I've ever done in 27 years of riding motorcycles."
As for the eager but defeated Americans, Knight noted, "It's new for the Americans; they've never done anything like it. I think they enjoy it, but it is hard. It's like someone going from a club event to a Grand Prix motocross, trying to race them guys. They've done well. Anyone that got halfway around this afternoon or tonight has done bloody well."
But Knight was the bloody best.
