2004 GNCC Round #14 "Ironman"

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The most anticipated event of the year is the "Ironman" in Crawfordsville, IN. This event attracts more riders and spectators than any other GNCC event. The name “Ironman” came from legendary GNCC two time ATV Champion Bob Sloan.

The track is located just one hour west of Indianapolis, IN. The area is extremely flat and the landscape is filled with fields of corn and other harvest crops, but don't let the flat land fool you because the "Ironman" track is anything but flat as I will describe later.

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With the forcasted rain heading toward the track on Saturday for the race, I arrived early to get parked in the grass field by the pit area to avoid having to park in the crop fields because they turn to mud pits when it rains.

With EXriders.com members and sponsors giving away a Kasea to the winner of the 90cc Limited Class, Pappy also arrived early to prepare for the big event. Also, he wanted to make sure that no one broke into his trailer, so he decided to leave the keys tio the locks at home

Luckily, I had an extension cord and Bare Performance's, Ty Rogers, offered us his grinder

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Once the locks were cut from the trailer, Cody got out his Honda 90 and showed some of his modifications to Brenon while Ryan watched.

It was a great sight to see a youth ATV at a GNCC and know it was going to be raced the next day

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The Bare Performance guys, Matt Bare and Ty Rogers, set out some of their products before we headed out to check out the track.

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The 10 of us headed out to the starting area and started walking the corn field high speed sections of the track.

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The track had several field sections, but the majority of the track was in the woods. The "Ironman" has been around for sometime, so the track was extra wide and rough in sections from years of abuse. With the leaves already falling it was going to be an extremely slick first lap for the morning race.

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The course also crossed the stream several times with several steep down hills that were hill climbs last year because the track was virtually identical, but run in the opposite direction.

The weather and track conditions were perfect on Friday, but the forcasted rain was going to definitely change things before the races on Saturday.

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While walking the course, Ray & Chris Martinez were meeting with riders explaining their new product the Shok-SpotR, which is attached to the back of the helmet to allows racers to know when their helmet has received a serious impact and needs to be replaced. This is a great idea because wearing a internally damaged helmet may be just as unsafe as wearing no helmet at all.

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Mini Quad Expert, Brandon's Father,Laz Sommers of GT Thunder installed a new piston in Cody Hill's Honda before the race.

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As I walked around the pits, I began seeing youth riders everywhere, which brought a smile to my face

The great thing was that not all the riders were young boy, but instead I saw several girls anxious to give GNCC racing a try. One of which was Ashley Eckert, who is none other than Marty Eckert's Daughter.