Blazusiak Pole-axes 'em
By TMX Archives on 28th May 08
POLAND'S Taddy Blazusiak successfully defended his Erzberg Rodeo Hare Scramble crown by finishing this year's gruelling event over 15 minutes ahead of BMW's Andreas Lettenbichler, but the real stars of the event were the five British riders that conquered the Iron Giant to make it to the finish of the world's toughest one day hare scramble.
Heading the British charge at this year's Erzberg, Paul Bolton claimed a well-deserved podium finish placing in tird and just three minutes behind runner-up Lettenbichler. With Mark Jackson tenth, Edward Jones 14th, Martin Craven 17th and Andrew Reeves 19th more British riders finished the XIV running of the event than from any other countryand that's without David Knight, Paul Edmondson and Tom Sagar competing!
DESPITE starting the Erzberg Rodeo Red Bull Hare Scramble with a dodgy wrist, and then finishing it with an injured knee, Britain's Paul Bolton showed that you don't nesseserily need to be a factory-backed rider to secure a great result at Erzberg.
Taking the fight to the many big-named riders competing in the event, Paul went one better than simply finishing the race as he had last year and joined KTM's Taddy Blazusiak and BMW rider Andreas Lettenbichler on the podium of the world's toughest hare scramble event.
I'm so pleased to have finished up here on the podium with Taddy and Andi, commented a clearly thrilled Paul from the podium. I take my hat off to everyone who's finished this year because it was definitely tough. I finished the race last year so I knew what to expect this time, which helped. Things went pretty well apart from hurting my knee, but finishing on the podium is great.
Just as he did in '07 Poland's Taddy Blazusiak claimed the win in the Red Bull Hare Scramble. Returning to the place where 12 months ago he first made a name for himself as an extreme enduro rider, Taddy, as expected, claimed a comfortable winning margin having completed this year's course in a time of 1.20:13.
Despite qualifying well for the race, Taddy made a mess of his start, which forced him to work hard during the first few kilometres of the race as he had to work his way past numerous riders in order to catch up with early race leader Andreas Lettenbichler.
The first few hills were tough, explained Taddy. Because of the dust I couldn't really see where I was going properly and I made some mistakes on the first climbs and crashed into some trees on the first downhill. I settled down a little after that but still had to catch Lettenbichler, Despres and Salminen.
ERZBERG RODEO HARE SCRAMBLE
RESULTS: 1 Taddy Blazusiak (KTM) 1.20:13, 2 Andreas Lettenbichler (BMW) 1.35:58, 3 Paul Bolton (Honda) 1.38:03, 4 Cyril Despres (KTM) 1.38:22, 5 Kyle Redmond (Christini/ KTM) 1.42:19, 6 Geoff Aaron (Christini/ KTM) 1.45:32, 7 Gerhard Forster (BMW) 1.46:15, 8 Chris Birch (KTM) 1.47:35, 9 Juha Salminen (KTM) 1.51:1, 10 Mark Jackson (KTM) 2.04:45, 11 Ralf Scheidhauer (KTM) 2.10:09, 12 Nicola Paganon (Aprilia) 2.11:45, 13 Daryl Curtis (KTM) 2.15:40, 14 Edward Jones (KTM) 2.32:09, 15 Rene Dietrich (KTM) 2.33:38, 16 Alex Antor (KTM) 2.35:06, 17 Martin Craven (KTM) 2.38:30, 18 Cory Grauffunder (KTM) 2.41:33, 19 Andrew Reeves (KTM) 2.44:50, 20 Roland Sailor (KTM) 2.52:46.
For full report and pictures see T+MX NEWS, Friday, May 30, 2008