Fred Wally and Andrew are kicking and my previuos comment on club team was meant at New Zealand and Sweden back out of both trophy teams and Spain bailed out on the world trophy team and the top 3 club teams are "stacked" with riders who would have been on those counties trophy teams. 4th club team is not a bad place to be after day 2. On a sad national note....looks like our USA World trophy team lost its "joker" today (buttrick) and Poland lost Oblucki on his Husky. No reasons known at this time. GO USA and GO JERSEY BOYZ! Tony is watching and smiling from high above!
Cory Buttrick was on the Jr. Trophy Team. Cory is banged up but is not hospitalized but not able to start this morning. He finished day 1. His wrists are hurt and possibly broken but not sure. Sprained at best.
Greetings from Morelia!!! Have not been able to post or check mail due to a lack of computer. One of our crew showed up and we have computer access now... Its been a good week. Today we start day 4. Been out to the specials...WOW, the French and Italianos are on the freaking gas. USA guys are holding there own as well. Got a behind the scenes pass tuesday at the paddock. Talked to Caselli. Lots to report and lots of great pics of all. Clubs are fast also. leaving now to day 4 specials. Mitch
Great for the check in!! Cant wait for fotos. Hey on an interesting note in E3 class P1,2,3 are all 2 Strokes, Hus, Gas,KTM
P1 E1 Meo P3 E1 Salvini, P3 E2 Juha on the move up and only 1/10 sec behind Oldrati, P1 E3 Guillaume. These are latest OA class positions so far as the today scores are still coming in. Hey not bad for a slow(by word of magazine testers) 250, a theorized(by many) ill handling 450 and old (stated by many, even fans) tech 300.
Finally back in to Morelia. Long day for our crew. Unofficially helping out Team USA here and there. Putting my bilingual skills to use. Rob, Lots of those slow, heavy, Huskies out there WOW, Huskies and 2 Strokes, it really does not get any better than this. The French team is at our hotel. Met Lulu Tuesday morning in the lobby. Got my photo with her. She was looking quite stunning in her clean riding gear Nice pics of that other slow husky (TE 449) from various riders. Salminen, Tarkala, Pajaro (Mexico). The 449 sounds great. Guys riding them just seem to be doing routine maint. The special tests are short, but fast. Talked to Caselli a couple times over the week and he said days 3 and 4 were rocky and technical. At dinner now, just thought I would post a quick update. Back to those huskies.....Lots of 2 stroke Huskies. Looks like a couple of team USA guys are running them. They have full Husky pit support, for those that bought the service. Talked to one of the USA club guys on a 125. He was running good. Hope he's still in it. Too many stories and pics to talk about. I feel like a kid in a candy store. Nothing like being in the pits, feet away from the top off road racers in the world. And Lulu standing next to you with her arm around you Mitch
Lulu is not only good looking and wicked fast in enduro but is a law enforcement officer for her regular job. In my opinion her being a cop makes her even more (fill in words here) nice !!!
GoFasters has lots of pics of the ISDE. Photos by Steve Berkner (Berkyboy). http://berkyboy.smugmug.com/
Well France is really dominating (if you call just a few seconds lead domination) the ISDE with 4 riders in the top 10 OA with all the other teams having only 2 riders each in the top ten. (Motivation for Cyril!!! one of our crew, made in France rider) for us Husky fans, 4 out of the top ten machines are the POS Husqvarna brand, KTM with 3 in the top ten is the next closest in the manufacturers battle.
Today was a good day for racing. Meo and Aubert both said it was a little of both hard and easy trails. Talked to Caselli at the end of the day. He said he had a good ride. We went to watch the race a few miles after the first special test. It was a long downhill, across a water crossing and then a long steep uphill. we were near the top of the uphill, which was a section of rocky, loose dirt, rain rut section. It was just a AA, Hard Enduro type section. Run twice, so by the second time thru, it was just shredded. Trophy, Jr's all made it thru no problems. Club guys were crashing all over the place, stuck in ruts. were talking bikes just stacked up one after another. USA had no spotters there, so crew and I decided to spot for USA. We scouted a good line for them, cleaned up a rut with stacked rocks and pointed the way. Our line was definately the way to go. Took less energy and safer on bike and rider. Course Marshalls allowed spectators to help riders, due to the difficulty of the section. We stayed for both loops and made sure all USA riders got thru. got the USA girls thru ok both times. Second loop, Amanda Mastin was tired, having a hard time going uphill. I got her bike turned around for her, so she could attempt the hill climb again, after she got stuck and then ran alongside her while she rode up the nasty stuff, calling out the lines and giving her encouragement. Those ladies our tough, my hats off to them. It was obvious that most club riders were in survival mode on second loop, so we ended up helping almost all the riders there, calling out lines, picking up bikes, giving words of encouragement. An Israeli rider on a Berg was just so wasted. He couldnt make it past the first part of the uphill, and that was the easy part I stayed with him, pushing, pulling, line scouting (dodging other bikes), until he got up and over and on his way. Overall a great day today, lots more great pics and short camera vids. Last nite got my pic with Meo at the hotel. The guy is so full of energy. Boy, those Husky 250, 449 and 2 smokers are running great!!! The riders on the TE449 are making it look easy, the bike is just flowing over the hard stuff. It looks really good Time for a cerveza Mitch
Fun thread. I am reading every word you are typing Mitch, much appreciated! Looks like USA got #3/#4 on day 5....
Day 6 is offically cancelled due to security issues. Apparently there was a gang related shooting at the other end of the Mall area last night about 1/4 mile from Parc Ferme. The final moto of the day draws a big crowd from all over the area and they felt that safety was an issue.
hard to postpone a day when the competitors are from all over the world. the 6th day, a MX race, has been cancelled before. Nothing unprecedented. Results are mereley based off of the 5 days. Joe
