2015 Red Bull Erzberg Rodeo - East Coast Style

Downtown Eisenerz

It’s been almost a full year of preparation - it was finally here!   The 21^st annual Erzberg Rodeo held in the little village of Eisenerz, Austria.  I built this up in my head so many times, I trained, I worked on my mental game, I did everything I could think of to be ready for the world’s toughest extreme enduro. It was one of those life events – and I was excited.

Matthias "Hiasi" Walkner and I

My family and I flew in a week early to visit my Grandparents in there new “digs” about 2 ½ hours from Erzberg. My dad is from Austria, so visiting Oma and Opa, my cousins and all my Austrian friends was awesome. This also allowed a few extra days for me to get used to the 7 hour time change before the race and it wouldn’t feel like I was racing in the middle of the night.

On the Tuesday before the race I was lucky enough to get some bike time in at a local mx track called the X-Bowl Arena – an awesome practice track with the mountains as a back drop. The pictures really don’t do it justice…it was unbelievable.

What was even more incredible was that dad and my grandparents hooked this up with none other than former MX3 world champ and current KTM factory rally team rider Matthias “Hiasi” Walkner. He let me ride one of his bikes for a few hours…it was absolutely perfect. If there were ever any doubts that this trip was going to be awesome, at that point I knew this would be insanely good. Thanks “Hiasi” for the hospitality, I will never forget that.

It really is THIS big!

Thursday:  we made our way to the Iron Giant. Even though I was there before, driving up to it this time was different. We got out of the car and stood in “awh” for a minute. I was just taking in the fact that we are actually here and I was going to ride this thing. I can’t put into words how big this place is…mind blown…again! Later that day we met up with my mechanic Teo from the X-Power Bike rental program and my race bike, the 2015 Husqvarna TE 300. Teo is such a good guy that has a lot of experience with the extreme enduros. I was excited to have some guidance on what to do with bike set up, race strategy, etc. Sign up went quite smoothly considering there were over 1500 racers trying to get this done all at once, but, the Red Bull staff had this thing figured out. Once I had my start numbers, transponders, correct accreditations and permissions I could finally jump on the Husky and play around a little bit on it.  I was feeling excited and ready for day 1 of qualifying on Friday.  

Qualifying - start ramp

Friday: I had a real late night on Thursday. I couldn’t get to sleep as I was pretty nervous and anxious to get out there.  That morning I woke up in a little bit of a fog that just didn’t seem to lift all day, but what the heck…time to go. My qualifying spot was in the morning, and if you know anything about weather in the mountains, you’ll know that it can be pretty calm that time of the day. No wind, no breeze, nothing. This meant that it was going to be super dusty on the 12 minute high-speed sprint up the mountain road. Never the less I qualified quite well, but the white out dust destroyed my shot at making the top 100.  I just couldn’t risk crashing out of the race, and hurt myself before Sunday. I was in, that was goal one, the top 100 would have been nice, but I saw what happened to the guys that risked it….not pretty. I finished in 112th.  I knew I could have gone much faster with better visibility, but that’s part of the game. Assess the risk, make a decision, and don’t second guess it. I was happy. Once I was done with the qualifying run, I got to play around in the practice area on some cool hill climbs - awesome!! It gave me the chance to fine tune the bike, learn some of its characteristics and get me ready for the next few days. To give you an idea of the steepness and length of these hills, if you have ever been to Monson, MA and looked at their hill, that’s about a ¼ of the size, and ½ as steep…but enough math.

Hill climb practice - pics don't really show the size of this thing

Saturday:  I got a good rest Friday night and was ready to make up some time in my 2^nd and final qualifying run up the mountain. The conditions were just as bad as on Friday and hardly any of the morning guys improved their previous times. Of course they let the pros go first again and gave them lots of time so they could wait for the dust to settle, but they weren’t so nice to us amateurs. Still, I was able to shave 3 seconds off my time, but that wasn’t enough to move me up into the top 100. Oh well…I qualified for the 3^rd row…good enough. All I needed on Sunday was a start and I would be able to go to work from there.

At this point I am still cleaner than Derek

That afternoon I worked on more bike set up in the practice training area.  I was ready to go for Sunday.  I was healthy and the bike felt perfect! I gave the bike to the mechanics to go through it and mount up new tires for Sunday.

Sunday:  Race day…the minute my eyes opened I was ready to rock and roll.  Nervous?…YES, definitely,  but overall I felt good.   When we got to the course it was heating up quick and there was no chance of rain, so it was going to be HOT and dusty.  I didn’t walk around much in the morning, just relaxed in the shade and got ready to go. 

The surprise of the morning was when Derek Rummel popped into the pit area. It was awesome to have a familiar face out there cheering me on! Derek, who moved from Connecticut to Munich a while ago, made the 4 hour road trip to come and help!!!! 

At 10:30 I went up to the pre race riders meeting where everybody was gathered before we all headed down to the start.  I was by myself from this point on. Mom, dad and Haley had started to hike out into the mountains to the help zones so they could assist if I needed help. I really had no idea what was going on at this riders meeting, we just sat around until 12 o’clock and then followed everyone down to the start.  We got all lined up and the heat was insane. 

Best Crew Ever!!!

We were at the bottom of the quarry – in this bowl - and all the heat was just hovering over us. It was absolutely miserable. Finally things started to get down to crunch time. Carl gave us the 2 minute warning and after that my rough day began… One of the guys next to me pointed out that my axle nut and chain tensioner were lying on the ground.  I was kind of in shock for a second and then put it on hand tight and asked everyone for tools… of course no one had any, so I decided to head back to the XPower trailer (mind you, my row was about to take off), no one was there as they were all somewhere on the course waiting for me in the help zones.  I raced up to the pro pits and went to the Husqvarna factory rig. Thankfully one of the mechanics was there cleaning up and he had the tools to fix my axle. As we were tightening the nut, behind me at the beer tent was the big TV screen showing the race, I saw the first row take off already. I was panicked - I jumped on my bike, said thank you in English and German and raced back down to the start.  When I got back my row was about to take off and a course marshal on the side wouldn’t let me go in (he thought I was late and the penalty was having to go to the very back of the pack. I was beyond pissed. I was mad at my mechanic Teo (he forgot to tighten the nut in the first place, when changing the tires the day before), mad at the marshal, mad at the world, and just extremely frustrated. All the preparation, the training, the effort we all put into this bounced around in my head for a few seconds, everything seemed to come unglued. Then I regained my composure. As my line took off – at the risk of being disqualified - I basically pushed the course marshal out of the way, and totally ignored his flailing arms and shouting and forced my way in to the very back of the line. I was way behind everyone on row 3.

Just another hill

The one thing that I wanted to avoid happened. It was a complete white out. Think of it as a snow storm where you can’t see your hand in front of your eyes. The carnage was incredible, words cannot describe it.  I did everything I could; I pushed to the very end until they pulled me off the course.  The bottlenecks were simply insane, there was no way around all the riders. It was like 200 bikes playing follow the leader with no room to pass, but I just had to keep going. It really wasn’t much of a race at that point, just plain survival and trying to find lines that weren’t blocked by downed bikes. I was faster and better than most of the guys stuck in front of me, but there was nothing I could do. I think you get a hint of how frustrating this really was.  About 10 minutes into the race I hit my first BIG bottleneck at one of the huge sand hills. Complete STOP. The climb itself really wasn’t bad but coming from the back there where about 60 bikes stuck on it with another 80 all at the bottom trying to get a run at it. It was a “luck” thing at this point either you got a clear line or you didn’t and whenever you had a clear line it was gone within a second as 10 other guys thought the same thing you did.  After I finally got a run at it I made it and continued on.  Next was some nice single track that was the best goat trail I have ever ridden…EVER.  Yes, there was a lot of stop and go, stop and go due to people in front of me but the trails were so fun it was hard not to smile.  After the first few check points it got a little bit technical with some river beds that were rather rocky.

The helpers were awesome!

That was the slowest section I got to ride due to the bottlenecks and people stuck EVERYWHERE. I worked through it – frankly, that’s my jam anyways…the nastier the more I like it. I was able to make a few good passes in the faster stuff, really trying to get around as many riders as I could before entering the next obstacle.  Long frustrating story short…end result…checkpoint 7. (They stopped me there even though I had time left, but a tragic spectator accident prevented the continuation to the next section). Not anywhere near what I could have done, but I had a blast and I made the best of the situation. I mean….I was at the legendary Erzberg rodeo! I fought hard each day; luck just wasn’t on my side this year.   It’s a part of racing, I’m not happy about it but I am dealing with it. I don’t know of any champion that hasn’t dealt with adversity before, so my future looks bright. I can’t wait to go back. Project Erzberg 2016 begins.  This year was a learning experience, if it was easy everybody would do it.  I’m going to get another shot at this thing and I’m going to rock it.

......!

Thank you to all that made this possible. To my moto family all over the country – I can’t begin to express my gratitude, your support, both mentally and financially means the world to me.

To my sponsors, thank you for all you do. I know sponsorship dollars are tight – especially for amateurs, so this means even more.

Fly Racing, Kenda Tires, Magical Gogo, FAHQ Racing, EKS Brand Goggles, SRT Offroad, Panic Rev Ministries, Carbon Zero, Renthal, Offroadpaparazzi, FMF Racing, Tubesaddle, JDay Offroad, Netra, Gary Krenzul

Thank you to my family – my grandparents in Austria and my grandparents here in the US - without them this would have never happened. Thank you to my mom, my sister, and my dad…simply the best crew ever!!!!!!

Thanks for reading and supporting me...see you at the races!!!

Hunter "747" Neuwirth

My Sister, Opa and I after the race