Legacy wrap-up race report. July 11th.

[bnd]

The weather was pretty brutal going into Saturday night & I thought that might scare off a lot of riders but that wasn't the case. I think we had around 20 motos but the classes were well represented & the stands were as full as I can remember. I'll get right into it with my thoughts & what I saw.

- Big Ripper Summer Series race #2.
We had some new & old faces race, Dustin Jennings, Danny Grube, defending series champion Jared Mitchell & to my surprise & one of the highlights of the night, Brooke & Breanna (Oblad) showed up, all ready to race. Before the drop of the 1st gate, as the riders were in staging, I mentioned on the mic that they were racing tonight & the crowd gave them a nice round of applause.
The usual suspects did what they did but in the 2nd round, the ladies decided to turn it loose & looked very fast, both making the main.
The main was set to be a banger, this was going to be good & it didn't disappoint! Full gate drops with Zach on the inside with the holeshot, Doc in the middle & Jared on the outside making up ground. Going into the 1st turn, Zach has the lead but Jared pulls what appears to be a sweeeet high-low around most of the berm & comes out of it on fire. Zach has a lot of speed himself but gets pulled, but it's not over. Zach is on his inside & going in hot into the 2nd corner. Jared looked to stall out at the top of the berm & I thought Zach was going to punt him but Zach brake checks hard & Jared is outta there. Really tight racing & the crowd was into it! Jared is gone & this action has allowed Doc to come right up onto Zach but Zach pulls away. Doc hangs on to 3rd with Brooke a solid 4th. The crowd also loved that. Then it went Doug, Danny, Breanna & Kevin T.
I didn't race for a number of reasons but did take a few laps around the track. It was HOT & I imagine these racers running as many laps as they did during the night, well it pretty much sucked.
One of the ideas I had 3 years ago was to get more female riders back & involved. We have had a few but I'd love to see more. The "triple points" earned for making the main all of a sudden is coming into play bigtime. I could see a female winning the overall title under the right circumstances. She or they would have to still consistently place high in the mains but as we are only counting your 4 best finishes + the 2x finals, it could very well happen.
Iv'e been asked "How many races do I need to qualify to be eligible for the Grand prize"? I'm going to go with 70% of all races ran. We really didn't know our schedule up until recently, so if you look ahead, we have racing up until the end of November or what weather permits. A quick glance at the calendar shows there are rough 15 or so races (weather permitting) till the beginning of Nov. So 70% of that plus the 2 we have already ran put it

around 10-12. So let's go with this.........10 races is what you need to be eligible

This is on the low side because I know people do other things & life gets in the way. If we have a stretch of cancelled races for whatever reason, I'll make adjustments 70%for that so nobody gets screwed. Sound reasonable?

- I have 3 video versions of the main event, courtesy Of Harmony Mitchell, Grady Ritter & Emma Randall.

- Word on the street is some big dogs are coming in from out of town to race next weekend. If we get just a few more riders, it's going to look like a national class & we could have semis. C'mon out!

- The moment of the night for me was watching somebody step it up, overcome his fears & win it. This all played out in the older cruiser class. Dustin Jennings, who hasn't really been racing a lot lately is in 2nd place going down the 2nd straight & shopping hard. He's got speed but those dubs are facing him down, what's he do? He boosts the dubs for the first time, clears them & takes the lead then he checks out. I watched as he passes the finish line & he was STOKED! I had to move on to announce the next race 9I'm up in the tower) & it was a few motos later when the door opens up & it was Dustin with this ear to ear, sh*t eating grin on his face, panting, sweating & was on cloud 9. Just seeing that moment, how happy he was, man, that's what it's all about! He sat down next to me & I kept fist bumping him, laughing too. Winning never gets old I told him, just another memorable moment being made on a Saturday night @ the BMX track.

- We had some issues to say the least starting the night off. The bathrooms we not open, the wireless mics didn't work, we didn't have an announcer..........
We got the bathrooms open courtesy of a Subway CC. Zach & I traded off on the mic. Zach IMO is great at it & even though Iv'e been around BMX forever, I've never really done it. It was nerve racking as hell & I was very self conscious while talking. When the mains started, I slowly realized Zach wasn't coming back......lol. I semi panicked but moved forward. The racers I knew, calling those motos wasn't bad but then, all of a sudden, I couldn't see the number plates & it was dead air......UGH!! I had a few people come up & help call number plates but it was still tough. I'm all for bringing back the big number plates & the 10" numbers I used to run in the 80's. So that's the story of what happened to the announcing last night. Thanks for putting up with it. We are going to continue to work out the bugs in our program, in the meantime, anybody that thinks they have the chops to give it a shot, come talk to Zach or me.

- The volunteers that helped out, again, thank you so very much. Finish line, Gate, staging, registration, corner workers.....thanks!

- We are going to start keeping the track open after races for at least 30 minutes for practice.

- I saw more & more kids going for the big dubs after the races. Yes, they are a little tricky but it looks like after you jump them once or twice you get it. Looks like everybody liked them.

- Plans are in the works to blow out the 2nd jump on the 3rd straight, it's a flow killer. Ive asked around & everyone agrees. It's going to be lower, wider & faster. The table coming out of the 1st turn is going to be turned into a step with nice backside to it. This is planned for around the 24th of July. We are always looking to make improvements on the track & do listen to the ridership.

Thanks for reading.
b.