Esperance - Ceremonial Finish

Nothing like a bit of a shake up on the last day, Colin left the bivouac first, as he was the fastest on leg 6, on the first of the loops that the field would be doing through the sand dunes of Esperance. but Colin never returned for the morning service at the bivouac, Smitty came back first with tales of the crashed riders and as a precaution we gave him a new set of front tyres to go out on for the last 2 stages of the event, John too returned to service with no problems having had a great time in the dunes with his big 850. After hearing the rumour from the returning riders and drivers that Col couldn't re-start his Renegade there was nothing that anyone could do but wait and see if the recovery truck pick him up and brought him in, this was proving to be a small problem as the recovery crew's were having trouble getting through the dunes themselves. Smitty said that if Col was still there on his next trip round that he would tow him in, which he did with the assistance of Moto division rider Richard Mayfield to get the Renegade out of the sand, the big TRX having some overheating issues as a consequence but the pair finally joined John at the rider re-group for the ceremonial finish and all three of the quad division crossed the line (even if Col had to push his.....) with the officlal finishing order being Paul Smith in a total time of 34:42:42 with 06:29:05 back to John Maragozidis at 41:11:47 and Colin Lawson with 41:55:48

It was a monumental effort for all three of these quads to get through this event and a Safari first for all the riders in this division to finish, even with some penalties and i will go on record as saying that this was not the easiest one that I have been involved with. Getting everything together to win this event is like herding cats, hard to keep them all moving in the same direction but it really does look like we got most of the bugs worked out of the TRX over the course of the week and Smitty kept his head when it was necessary. No doubt it will be time to start getting ready for next year soon enough.

Me sitting on the Safari winning 700XX

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