Eric
Galaviz Interview: Rocky Mountain UTV Racing
New Six Round RMURA UTV
Racing Series in Colorado
Rocky
Mountain UTV Racing |
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Eric Galaviz
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Denver,
CO (5/13/2015) -
With
the opening round of the Rocky Mountain
UTV Racing postponed due to flooding, they
still held a fun ride since ATVriders.com
was already set to make the trip out. A
great group of people came out for some
play riding, socializing, and some grilled
food and snacks, which made for a fun day
With the increasing popularity
of SxS / UTV vehicles, more people are
looking for a place to race, and Eric
Galaviz is attempting to fill that void
in his home state of Colorado with the
inaugural year of the Rocky Mountain UTV
Racing Series. With six rounds of SxS
/ UTV racing on the schedule for 2015
all within an hour of Denver at three
great tracks in the Denver area that have
modified their tracks to make for some
competitive SxS racing action.
The opening round was
set for May 9th, but due to a week of
rain and flooding, the first round has
been postponed to May 16th, and they are
expecting a large turnout with everyone
being stuck inside for the past week.
We had an opportunity
to meet up with Eric Galaviz at a fun
ride he held for those still itching to
get outside even if it was still raining,
and a fairly large group showed up, which
made for a fun Saturday.
ATVRiders.com:
I’m here with Eric Galaviz with the Rocky
Mountain UTV Association. What made you
decide to start this new SXS racing series
in Colorado?
Eric
Galaviz:
Well, there is this big void in this area
for these types of events and we kind of
saw this at a good opportunity to be proactive
and getting ahead of the game to set something
up. We have a lot of riders and racers in
the area, so as soon we put this out in
November, people were getting really excited
about it. There were a few tracks who hadn’t
been running UTV’s and we kind of got them
to agree to design and build the tracks
to UTV spec and it was a no-brainer at that
point.
ATVriders.com:
So who all is involved in running the series
or helping you out with the RMUTVA?
Eric Galaviz:
Haha (laughs), right now it’s just myself
and Jeremy Brown. We are partners in this,
and we’ve got a lot of extended families
with all of the racers and their families.
We’ve got a lot of people coming out to
help, Dallas and Kyle are both helping out,
along with Mike. It’s a family based event,
and they are all kicking in.
ATVriders.com:
What got you into UTV racing?
Eric Galaviz:
I started racing two years ago, which is
fairly new. I just got hooked like a fish!
There’s a truck track around here, and they
added a UTV class to the race, and I ended
up taking second place in the series last
year. At the end of that, we just sat down
and said it would be really neat if we could
have an exclusive race series for the UTV
racing.
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| Eric
Galaviz has a true passion for the
sport as a racer himself & he
also races at many of the WORCS Racing,
so he has experience seeing how a
professional SXS racing series is
run |
ATVriders.com:
If the weather cooperates, and everything
comes together, how many UTV’s do you think
you see out at the opening round?
Eric Galaviz:
We’d love to and expect to see anywhere
from 40-50 UTV’s, 20 people have already
preregistered, When weather opens up here,
people come out of the woodwork, they’ve
usually been cooped up in the house and
want to get out, so we are hoping for that
for the first round and watching it grow
over the season.
ATVriders.com:
It appears all the Rocky Mountain UTV Association
races for 2015 are pretty close to Denver?
Eric Galaviz:
Right now, the tracks we are using are Valley
Dirt Riders, they’ve been there for forty
years and is about 35 minutes north of Denver.
Off Road Extreme is 45 minutes East of Denver
and it’s called CORE. The other track is
RAM Off Road, which is South of Denver,
it’s a really interesting track with elevation
changes and huge jumps, it’s a neat track.
The hope is to expand out of Colorado for
next year into Utah, and maybe even Texas,
New Mexico, and Wyoming.
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| With
the opening round of the Rocky Mountain
UTV Racing postponed due to flooding,
they still held a fun ride since
ATVriders.com was already set to
make the trip out. A great group
of people came out for some play
riding, socializing, and some grilled
food and snacks, which made for
a fun day |
ATVriders.com:
It’s a great start with three tracks, basically
all within an hour of Denver. How many total
racers are planning on doing?
Eric Galaviz:
We are doing six races this year and we’d
like to expand to nine races next year.
This year we thought the six races was just
enough to take on plus our racing schedules
ourselves. There are a lot of races out
here and the dessert series is one that
we are helping to promote and sponsor, so
between the two of them, there are two races
a month!
ATVriders.com:
The racing classes, how many different options
are you going to offer for people?
Eric Galaviz:
As of now we have eight classe; Expert 1000,
Sportsman 1000, Expert 900, Expert 800,
Sportsman 900, and then a beginner class,
powderpuff class, and a kid’s class.
ATVriders.com:
Are you going to be offering any payouts
for any of the classes?
Eric Galaviz:
We are going to be doing an end-of-year
series payout for probably the top three
of the class but we are doing prizes and
awards at every race and we’ve teamed up
with some of the good sponsors who will
be giving us some stuff.
ATVriders.com:
Who are some of the sponsors who will be
kicking in for the races and prizes?
Eric Galaviz:
Locally, we’ve got G-Force Powersports who
are one of the bigger sellers of Polaris,
they’ve really stepped it up with vendor
support and track support right there. Also,
Mile High Motorsports, they do a lot of
off road mods, fabrication, and they are
one of the top guys in Denver for doing
UTV’s and carry a lot of stuff. ITP tires
has stepped up big time and they will be
a sponsor for us this year and next year.
We are partnering with people as well. Assault
Industries, Nelson and Nelson, all of these
guys have amazing products and they’ve been
with us from the get-go.
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| Rocky
Mountain UTV Racing Series Partner,
Jeremy Brown, catching some air in
his Polaris RZR XP 1000 |
ATVriders.com:
The opening round was postponed till May
16 because of all the rain?
Eric Galaviz:
Yeah it’s kind of unheard of for us to this
amount of rain for weeks on end. The venue
we had, the track surface was good to go,
but the actual access to the park and venue
was completely washed out and was impassable,
so we are hoping for real good weather and
hopefully that will turn into good numbers
and as far as the feedback goes that we’ve
gotten is that people are just dying to
get out so by next weekend it should be
really nice
www.rmura.org
