Trail Rider Magazine

22 Trail Rider www.TrailRider.com from "I'm really interested" to "there's no other way, I can't see anyone else doing this." It came at a difficult me. Our house had just sold, we were living out of a camper while we built, we got the phone call from Kawasaki just three weeks prior asking if we would be the factory team for off- road so we were in the middle of a shop build. Then just a er I said yes to Na onal Enduro we found out we had another kid on the way. There was a six week me-frame where I'm lucky my wife didn't suffocate me (laughs). All the ideas I'm pu ng into the place with the series, they're being done with the idea to grow and improve the sport. Alan grew the sport considerably by taking the math out of it [Editor note: transi oning from " mekeeping" style enduros with a designated MPH average and blind checks, to the modern "reset format" that people associate with Na onal Enduro today]. For long term viability we need to keep making changes, now those next steps comes into play. So between that and the overwhelming support from Alan Randt and the AMA, I just couldn't say no to it. You did a great interview with Brian Pierce of Seat Time not long ago, about some of these changes. I encourage people to go watch it if they haven't al- ready, but in the mean me, touch on some of those changes you're making. The cloverleaf instead of the long loop is one – try- ing to design events so that all tests return to the main parking area. There's mul ple reasons for this: easier for riders who don't have chase crews, and be er opportuni es to get spectators and poten al- ly alive feed, which would generate revenue, espe- cially for the pro racers. And as a pro, I understand how important that is. We also are wan ng to try two-day styles of racing, with the pros racing Sat- urday and the amateurs on Sunday. This allows the amateurs who don't want to get ran over by us all day to watch the pros instead of ge ng ran over by the pros. As you know, there's a lot of people who get put on our rows [with the pros] that don't really want to be there. With those changes I think every- one will have a smoother day. The two events we're running as two-day events will also give us space to test out and include our e-moto racers – Starks, RFN, Bonell, all of them. Since it's only two rounds, it will be a non-points class, but it opens the door so we can see where they belong. Then since we have non-points classes on Sunday, it's also possible for you to show up and just ride, transponder-less, so long as you have a row s cker and stay within your hour-out limit. So for exam- ple, if a er your race on Saturday you wanted to go out and trail rider sec ons with Shelby [Turner] or maybe just casually ride with one of your amateur friends, you'd be able to do that. The next major change is for the youth riders, switching to a hare scramble format. We saw a 49% increase in a endance. This has been a touchy sub- ject. I grew up racing real enduros, from the me I was three years old here at Sumter. At that me, youth enduro was big. That's where the kids were, that's where your friends were, that's where you went. Now that's small, and the camaraderie is at hare scrambles. We need to change things to retain our youth. A lot of the younger kids just didn't enjoy the enduro format. But once the kids are used to being at these events, making friends here, they'll stay around and become future enduro riders. We s ll have a stepping stone as well – the Enduro Futures race, where you have to be twelve to compete and they take off in our race. Another change you'll see in the future is us work- ing with OnX, to provide track maps as well as just the road maps. This will help with both specta ng and medical situa ons. So our guys will be showing up sooner to pre-ride and map all the trails and roads. We've also got our Na onal Enduro app we're developing. It'll have some cool stuff, we're going to offer the ability to plug in your row num- ber and build your own route sheet, with a reverse countdown clock. So it'll show you that you're going into your next test in eleven minutes. It'll track your stats through the season too, just some random things that could be cool. We did some tes ng this weekend, we're hoping to launch it in Oklahoma The last change I want to talk about on the pro side is with the row numbers. We went to career num- bers for all of our pros. There were a lot of people, even some involved with or sponsoring the series who did not understand why the row numbers changed and what that signified... You're joking. You must be joking, right? No. It's also really important to the riders for branding purposes. I was told by one of the OEMs

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