Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Big Stripper Blog

Nah, Ol' Hamer hasn't gone off the deep end and ventured off to some "gentleman's clubs", The Big Stripper is the LA Dirtriders round of the Mid South Hare Scrambles Series held last weekend in Lynnville Indiana.

I arrived just after Noon on Saturday with intentions of helping out my friends. As it turned out, most everyone had their machines ready to rock, but I did get to help on a grip replacement early Sunday. Most of Saturday was just spent cruising around with Butch Bradley, visiting with friends and having a few "golden yummies"! Also got to hang with my old buddy Brian Belwood, from the old days of motocross. Brian always brings a certain flair to the camp outs!

Sunday's action started early for the little guys. First off were the Junior A and Junior B classes. Brandon Gourley took off like a scalded cat and never looked back. He opened up quite a lead, but backed off some towards the end to conserve fuel.

Junior B started shortly behind the Junior A's and they were off running wild as well. Matthew Bell was among the riders in the Jr. B class, but the pictures I got of Matt were blurry as crap! Honestly, I wasn't expecting to see the Bell's and he came up on me pretty quickly and I almost missed him. Brandon won the Junior A class, Matthew finished 3rd in Junior B.

Next up were the mini classes. Brett Gourley was aboard the KTM 65 and like bigger brother Brandon, was hauling butt in the woods. All three of the Gourley boys do a lot off their training in the woods, and it's no surprise they are as fast in the woods as they are on a motocross track.

Big bikes were next, and it looked like they had several hundred riders ready to tackle the Lynnville trails. Cory Buttrick, #12 and Jordan Ashburn, #927 pretty much ran away from everyone else in the AA Pro classes. Buttrick was the eventual winner, with Ashburn second.

Scott Goodman has some helmet cam footage of an entire lap of the course over on youtube. In the 4th installment, you can actually see the Ashburn and Buttrick passing Scott, who by the way is an excellent woods rider, and checking out in just a few seconds. Pretty amazing footage by Scott.


Former SIMX team motocrossers #561 Broc Sims and KTM mounted Tanner Byarly were running Heavy A and Lites A respectively. Sims always gets a good start, and the Lynnville round was no exception. Unfortunately Sims, encountered a flat early into the race and had to settle for a 10th place finish. Tanner also got an awesome start and rode hard the entire race, finishing 3rd in his class and 9th overall for the entire event.

Both Broc and Tanner are as fast on a motocross track as they are in the woods. It was good to see these guys doing well at the "Big Stripper".

Competing almost side by side in the Lites B class was Broc Gourly, #32 and #57 Zach Greenwell. These guys were charging hard right from the start and were with in eye site of each other, 'til Zach got a flat tire as well, and ended his day about the 2nd lap of the race. Broc, on the other hand continued charging all the way to the class victory and a 22nd overall finish for the event.

Justin Brockman was competing in his second hare scramble ever. He ran in the Iuka round, which I have heard nothing good about, and was looking forward to better conditions and luck in Lynnville. Well. he got the conditions, but unfortunately the "luck" thing just wasn't to be. Justin had gotten stopped at a bottleneck and a rider's bike fell into his damaging a radiator. He managed to make it back to the pits, but the Ol' Kawi conked out on him there!

Other notables... Mark Guy, forum regular won the Super Senior A class, Koltin Ellis finished 22nd in 250C, Oakland City's own, Tyler Richeson finished 24th in 250C. Clay Butts finished 17th in Junior B and Chris Gibson had a 4th place in the Open B class.

More "Big Stripper" pics can be found here

No comments:

Post a Comment

Leave me a comment!