Hameenlinna, Finland -- ISDE -- Final Official Results
Tom Niemela
It's done - we got third. Not too bad considering Rodney Smith's bike
seized in front of a referee.
-Tom Niemela
[This comes from Tony Tellier in Finland. Cycle News also has an
internet web page with excellent results at:
http://www.cyclenews.com/cycle/isde/ ]
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Hameenlinna, Finland -- RIS -- Final Official 175 Results-FIM 71st
International Six Days Enduro.
Class Team Name
175 T 1 Sala, Giovanni ITA GOLD
175 T 2 Edmonson, Paul GBR GOLD
175 T 3 DAVIS, TY USA GOLD
175 T 4 Laaksonen, Jani FIN GOLD
175 T 5 Peterhansel, Stephane FRA GOLD 175 T 6 Watts, Shane AUS GOLD
175 T 7 Pellegrinelli, Tullio ITA GOLD 175 T 8 Sartin, Rob GBR GOLD
175 T 9 Kytonen, Vesa FIN GOLD
175 JT 10 Boano, Jarno ITA GOLD
175 T 11 HATCH, STEVE USA GOLD
175 T 12 Hedendahl, Joachiam SWE GOLD 175 T 13 Scheder, Karel TCH GOLD
175 JT 14 Rubin, Matteo ITA GOLD
175 JT 15 Ahonen, Tuamos FIN GOLD
175 T 16 SMITH, CHRIS USA GOLD
175 T 17 Isfordink, Patrick NED GOLD 175 T 19 Algay, Gilles FRA GOLD
175 T 20 Johansson, Joakim SWE GOLD
175 T 22 Hrehor, Jan SLK GOLD
175 JT 24 LAFFERTY, MIKE USA SILVER
175 T 36 Puigdemonte, Marc ESP SILVER 175 T 38 Morgan, Stuart AUS SILVER
175 C 40 HARTE, DAN USA SILVER
175 C 44 ADY, TOMMY USA SILVER
175 T 52 Orrviak, Ulf USA SILVER
175 C 62 MASTIN, RANDY USA SILVER
175 C 68 KOELLER, ERIC USA BRONZE
175 C 70 BAILEY, LYNN USA BRONZE
175 C 73 EBERSOLE,TOM USA BRONZE
175 C 81 YARNELL, KEVIN USA BRONZE
175 C 85 TOMEO, KEN USA BRONZE
175 T INT SMITH, RODNEY USA DNF
175 JT NST Arpa Miqui ESP DNF
175 C NST CRENSHAW, KELLY USA DNF
175 C NST CROSLAND, RICHARD USA DNF
175 C NST Hrobsky, Frantisek TCH DNF 175 C NST PARFITT, TOM USA DNF
175 T NST Tiley, Carl GBR DNF
Hameenlinna, Finland -- RIS -- Official Final 125 Results-FIM 71st
International Six Days Enduro.
Class Name
125 1 Silvan, Petteri FIN GOLD
125 2 Larsson, Rickard SWE GOLD
125 3 Ahola, Mika FIN GOLD
125 4 Scovolo, Fausto ITA GOLD
125 5 Puidgemont, Xavier ESP GOLD
125 6 Salminen, Juha FIN GOLD
125 7 HAWKINS, RANDY USA GOLD
125 8 Fretigne, David FRA GOLD
125 9 Viljakainen, Pekka FIN GOLD
125 10 Matoska, Radek SLK GOLD
125 12 Bergwall, Peter SWE GOLD
125 13 Costes, Dominique FRA GOLD
125 14 Vojkuvka, Lubomir TCH GOLD
125 15 COOPER, GUY USA GOLD
125 19 HOESS, FRED USA GOLD
125 35 Laasko, Juha FIN SILVER
125 41 BENNETT, BRIAN USA SILVER
125 44 CLARK, KERRY USA SILVER
125 50 CONNER, JIM USA SILVER
125 55 STORRIE, BRIAN USA BRONZE
125 59 KIRCHNER, JEFF USA BRONZE
125 63 KNAPP, ANDY USA BRONZE
125 66 Maria Sandell SWE BRONZE
125 INT GARZA, MANNY USA DNF??
125 INT Passeri, Stefano ITA DNF
Hameenlinna, Finland -- RIS -- Final Official 500/4 Results-FIM 71st
International Six Days Enduro.
Class Team Name
500/4 T 1 Tiainen, Kari GOLD
500/4 T 2 Farioli, Fabio GOLD
500/4 T 2 Shearer, Mike GOLD
500/4 T 3 Katrinak, Jaroslav GOLD
500/4 T 4 Kremel, Martin GOLD
500/4 T 5 von Zitzewitz, Dirk GOLD
500/4 T 6 Posledni, Bohumil GOLD
500/4 T 7 Gallardo, Oscar GOLD
500/4 T 9 SUMMERS, SCOTT GOLD
500/4 T 9 Koch, Wolfgang GOLD
500/4 T 10 Koniar, Peter GOLD
500/4 T 11 Schram, Simon GOLD
500/4 T 13 Deacon, John SILVER
500/4 C 14 Kaipanen, Mike SILVER
500/4 C 15 WILCOX, CURT SILVER
500/4 C 20 BROWNELL, JERROLD SILVER
500/4 T NST Jansson, Peter DNF
Hameenlinna, Finland -- RIS -- Final Official 400/4 Results-FIM 71st
International Six Days Enduro.
Class Team Name
400/4 T 1 Eriksson, Anders SWE GOLD
400/4 T 2 Nicoli, Arnaldo ITA GOLD
400/4 T 3 Hoevers, Alfons NED GOLD
400/4 C 4 Aures, Juuka FIN GOLD
400/4 C 5 Nuuttila, Juha FIN GOLD
400/4 T 6 Sainct, Richard FRA GOLD
400/4 T 7 Lenselink, Peter NED GOLD
400/4 T 8 Kotrba, Otakar TCH GOLD
400/4 T 9 Klaus, Nico GER GOLD
400/4 C 10 Jantti, Olli FIN SILVER
400/4 JT 11 KNAPP, DON USA SILVER
400/4 T 12 Holz, Karl-Heinz GER SILVER 400/4 T 13 Lind, Martin SWE SILVER
400/4 C 14 NIELSEN, JOHN USA SILVER
400/4 T 16 Rinaldi, Mario ITA SILVER 400/4 C 18 SPIGELMYER, MARTIN USA
SILVER 400/4 C 19 BAMFORD, TRAVIS USA SILVER 400/4 JT 22 LAWSON, RON USA
SILVER
400/4 C 22 JOHNSON, ROBERT USA BRONZE 400/4 C 24 McCARREN, MIKE USA
BRONZE 400/4 C 25 WOODARD, RIP USA BRONZE
400/4 T INT Reed, Shawn AUD DNF
400/4 C INT DAVIS, VINCENT USA DNF
400/4 JT INT HAMILTON, BILL USA DNF
400/4 T NST Macek, Martin YCH DNF
Phwew ... long Scandanavian daze n nights. Coverage was tough. I had to
cry "Onkle" (in Deutsch) when it came to trying transcribe ST scores,
Route Points, teams, overalls daily results, cummulative scores, etc.,
etc.
If anyone wants some SPECIFIC in-depth information on, for example, the
Jousa club team (they had 116,663,38 points!) E-mail me.
It's Monday evening and I'm still beat, pooped and whipped. But I'm real
glad the Eurocar people didn't have me held at the airport for crimes
against "hire cars.".
USA STANDS ON PODIUM AS TY TOP AMERICAN AT "SIX DAYS"
Hameenlinna, Finland -- 71st FIM International Six Days Enduro. April 12
- 17, 1996
When all the dust cleared around Hameenlinna, Finland, and the results
were tallied after six days of dawn til dusk dirt bike action Ty Davis
(1996 Baja 500 Class 22 and overall motorcycle champion ) was the
top-scoring American. Riding a "Team Green" Kawasaki KX250, Davis led
the six-man AMA "World Trophy" team to the best finish, ever, for an
American team -- Third Place. The other team members on the
1583-kilometer event were Randy Hawkins, Steve Hatch, Scott Summers,
Rodney Smith, Chris Smith (no relation), all Eastern "woods" riders.
Only Davis (Hesperia, CA), a member of the Checkers, has any desert
experience -- the dry, dusty and silty conditions were "normal" to the
USA's premier off-road rider.
The USA has not done well in the past ISDEs. They were not in the top
five in 1995 (Poland) and were 9th in Tulsa (1994) where Davis was the
third 250 in an otherwise nonstellar team performance. This makes the
Stars And Stripes a force to be reckoned with next year.
Three hundred riders from Europe and the America's crowded the small
lake-ringed vacation town in southern Finland. Weather was atypically
Scandinavian: temperatures were in the mid-70s and there was no rain.
The phrase "When all the dust cleared ... " is not an exaggeration. The
repeat parts of the course got used up big time. Mud and rain gear was
never unpacked; Camelbaks were filled at every pit.
A "Six Days" works like this: everybody rides 150 -200 miles a day,
leaving according to a random draw, several on each minute, and have to
reach ten (or more) pre-defined checkpoints on time. Each second of time
that a rider is late is counted against him (or her... there were two
Swedish women who finished). After the Checkpoints are short so-called
"Special Tests" (ST) where the riders is timed -- from start to finish --
and that value is subtracted from the time of the fastest man (per
displacement class - 125 cc, 175, 400/4-stroke or 500/4-stroke) and those
deltas are then accumulated as a running total over the Six Days.
The optimum situation is to:
1) Never be late for a Checkpoint -- i.e., accrue zero "Route Points" --
and
2) Be the fastest rider over each Special Test (which are about 5 km in
length and are either a motocross or a WFO blast through the trees).
The minimum "ST Points" would also be zero, i.e., the baseline
performance against which all others (in that engine size class) would be
judged.
Making the Checkpoints on time is relatively easy (a relative term) for
the very best riders -- so long as no mechanical problems arise or being
held up by a radar cop. (Some transit sections required the use of
public roads.)
Being assessed even ONE route point, at all, ever, puts a rider off of
any possibility of being awarded a Gold Medal at the end of the event.
In addition to being "clean", the Gold Medal winners must also finish
with their total score, from those thirty-one Special Tests, no greater
than 110% of the fastest.
The winning formula is "go like hell and don't be late."
The host Finns did and weren't.
They had one rider, Petteri Silvan, who was perfect for five straight
days -- no points at all. And they a second man (Five-time World Enduro
Champ, Husqvarna 610-riding Kari Tiainen) who cleaned four days.
Although they finished with 26.16 and 39.47 points (i.e., "seconds") ,
respectively, the Man Of The Meeting was Italian Giovanni Sala who
accrued only 18.71 points.
Complete all six Six Days within 40% and you get the Silver Medal.
Finish without "houring out", i.e., being late to any Checkpoint by over
sixty minutes, and you get the Bronze.
The Finns won both the World Trophy Team cup and the "Junior Trophy" --
another prize for four-man teams under 25 years of age. The US had a
"Junior" contestant -- Bill Hamilton -- break a foot on Day One and,
according to the rules, the non-riding rider was assessed a daily score
of 7200 points, an insurmountable number considering that the fastest
drivers were accumulating only 1700 points a day for their Special Test
times. (This then goes to a normalized "zero" for the winner of each day
and only the difference is kept as the score.) The Americans ended up
languishing down in Seventh Place.
The Yanks had the largest number of entries -- thirty-eight riders --
with thirty-three finishing all Six Days. Ten non-AMA-sponsored "Club"
teams -- with three riders -- were in competition. The "Daytona Dirt
Riders" --
Guy Cooper, Fred Hoess and John Nielsen -- won over forty-two others.
"Air" Cooper, an ex-Pro motocrosser turned woods specialist, was the top
Club rider while Hoess had the second lowest Club score and a Gold.
Students of the Camel Trophy competition may recall that Fred was one of
the two US entrants in Borneo this year. "Now THAT was brutal," he
explained. "More mud than you'd ever want and the same for bugs. Two
weeks of flogging a Rover and yourself through the jungle." Fred
apparently thrives on discomfort.
1996 SCORE Class 30 champion, Dave Simpson of Rancho Suspension, was a
Camel Trophy competitor in 1994. Fred concurred that the Camel Trophy is
not just an off-road rally, it stresses teamwork (whether it exists or
not!) , physical (and mental) conditioning, terrain savvy, driving
ability and the capability to make quick-and-proper decisions under the
stress of bad weather, vermin, heat and sleepless nights.
Chasing the riders through the many access roads and trails was a big
part of the Six Days. Sort of like Baja -- but chasers can't go on the
course. Or aren't supposed to. No radios are allowed -- not like Baja.
However each Pit had a leased cellular phone as did many of the Trophy
Team chasers. The basic course was different on four of the six days
with two back-to-back duplicate days and some ST re-runs and cross-over
points.
Fuel was required at every pit but any maintenance had to be performed
solely by the rider: other than opening and closing the fuel tank, no one
else was permitted to even touch the motorcycle. Officials, "Marshalls",
were lurking at every corner.
Each USA pit serviced more than 350 motorcycles -- two- and four-strokes
-- over the course of the long five days. That is about 450 total
gallons of fuel per assignment and we did not set anything on fire, fill
any leathers with "98E" or put plain "four-stroke" fuel into a
two-stroke. Our fuel was transported in the back of a hatchback Citroen
"hire car" -- 18 jerry cans at a time. Not quite the way we like to do a
Checker pit, believe me.
Immediately after each day's ride the riders were able to perform such
pleasant tasks as changing tires, swapping filters and performing
miscellaneous damage control. The rules strictly DISallow changing the
wheel hubs, the frame, the engine cases and the silencer (which can be
spot-checked for compliance to a 94 dB limit). At the end of this
post-ride work session all bikes are placed in an impound area -- the
Parc Ferm~ -- where they remain untouched until a scant ten minutes
before the next morning's scheduled start. On one day Randy Hawkins
swapped the rear tire in five minutes then dismounted the front only to
find that his replacement knobby was "missing." He had to ride to the
Parc on the rim and do the swap in the AM. In other words, he got to got
to bed without his motorcycle ready to roll. "Sleep tight!"
It was an education to watch Davis single-handedly change two tires --
fitted with greased-up "mousse" inner tubes -- then do an air filter and
fuel up. (Personally, I drive to my nearest dealer and pay $10 to have
the tire changed.) The rider can be handed tools. Thanks for small
favors.
Davis changed transmission oil several times on the trail. A rider may
not pass through a checkpoint before his scheduled time but he can make
up time by riding like the wind then wait, work, take a "break", drink or
just BS in the Pits ... which are located just before the Check to the
cushion is the only thing wsted. Funny how that works, huh? Some
time-stressed riders had to be gassed and watered after the Check --
can't go backwards, you know. The pits all had schedule boards with each
rider's check times.
Summers changed oil filters and oil in his booming XR600 several times.
Chris Smith split a clutch cover on a rock and replaced it in a New York
Minute. His chaser brother, Drew, rode an identical CR250 so it was a
simple -- and fast -- field swap. (Drew then had time to silicone the
split and split.)
Ty was quick enough to win several Special Tests but was never the top
rider -- just to punctuate how fast the Italian actually was. The route,
while dusty like the desert, was also narrow and usually close, tight and
twisty through pine trees. Roots and rocks were part and parcel of the
scene. One Special Test was UP a ski slope, back and forth, across and
between the moguls -- often off-camber, and after several days of re-use,
very silty and difficult. The local motocross track ST had several
Supercross-style "Table Top" jumps where over-enthusiastic riders could
style their way right into trouble. Scott Summers bent the rear axle on
his XR600.
The sixth Six Day was only thirty miles ending with a class-by-class
motocross Special Test on a large grassy field. In his race, Davis got
pushed out and off the track during the land rush start and had to play
catch up. Which he did quite well coming up through the ranks from 15th
place to eventually finish fifth.
Cooper styled on the flat smooth track until he washed out on the wet
shin deep grass and after remounting had to settle for a fifth behind the
two winning Solvaks. The MX-hip crowd all knew who Guy was. The
slippery codtions rewarded the rider who had the foresight and energy to
re-tire before they retired on Friday evening. Worn knobbies were not
acceptable as more than several of bikes spun out while trying to cut a
berm rather than doing an Ascot half-mile slide number. Fred Hoess for
one.
It was all very nationalistic with huge flags waved in the riders' faces
and gangs of screaming Portuguese, Eastern Europeans, French and
Italians.
The Aussies were over by the beer tent. I know. I was there. For
research purposes, of course.
The oldest rider to finish was Tom Ebersole, a 49 year old gynecologist
from Philly. The final finisher of the ISDE was an American, Rip Woodard
who is an USAF A-10 attack aircraft pilot. If he is lucky perhaps he can
be stationed in Gila Bend (AZ) to do the Goldwater Gunnery Range scene.
The Houstonite had 29,565.08 uncorrected points. (Rip's dad, Rip III or
Jr. or -- they don't know either -- was our pit captain. He is a Texas
Attorney At Law -- as if there were another type -- a good man to work
with.)
Overall winner Sala had 10,910.31 points, which means that Rip was
18,654.77 seconds behind (or 5 hours and 11 minutes late.)
Charlie Halcomb, who really had his bell rung in a Baja racing incident a
year (?) ago, was back in action as the Team Manager for the Trail Rider
M/C Club riders. He was also acting like a chaser dude, definitely a
good sign.
There were the Italians (who will host the 1997 ISDE). There were the
Finns, the Argentines, a Pole, Nederlanders, Brits, one Irishman,
Welshmen, loads of Aussies ("G'die, Mate"), a couple of Canadians,
Germans, lots of Yanks, Mexicans (sponsored by "Corona"), Spaniards,
Portuguese, French, one Slovakian and several Czechs, all making for a
Tower Of Babel in the pits.
The quality of the riders and the preparation of their machines was
second to none. After all, 87% of the Americans finished the event. And
the entire behavior of the riders and chasers and pitters was not
sterotypical "motorcycle" -- there wasn't a Larkin Wight in the bunch.
Too bad!
####
MARK D. GUSTAFSON
Just want to offer my congratulations to our ISDE team. Well done, and thanks for representing us!
Mark Gustafson
94 KX250
Dayton OH