Stapleton sweeps in Parry Sound

By Suzanne Howie

PARRY SOUND, ON -- Jake Stapleton continued his dominant season in Canadian off-road racing with a sweep of both days of last weekend's World Enduro Canada event in Parry Sound.

The first running of the WEC-sponsored Parry Sound Enduro was certainly a success, with riders and spectators commenting on how well run and organized the event was.

As with any event, there were minor issues, such as the transponders not being programmed for Saturday, but that was a rather small bump in an otherwise very smooth road.

Many familiar hare scramble faces were in attendance, including Pro riders Stapleton, Brian Wojnarowski, Mike Vandenhoek, Tyler Linton, Kevin Cockayne and Jonathan Ryan, as well as Quebec riders Allan Lachapelle and Patrick Beaule.

If there can be one organizational criticism made it is that there were simply too many classes. The splintering, especially in the Pro ranks, made it hard to have an actual competition between riders. There were five Pro classes, the largest of which was the E2 Pro (for 250cc two-stroke or 450cc four-stroke machines); some classes, such as EJ, had only one rider. It is, however, the standard Enduro format to run all the classes, not just the Pro ranks, this way.

Saturday the Pros showed how smooth they could be, many of them climbing up the rock face of the extreme test like nothing was even there. Vandenhoek should get the award for most creative line, shooting his GasGas straight up the centre, much to the shock and surprise of the spectators who had been standing there.

Saturday Pro Results
1 – Jake Stapleton (E2) – 1523 pts
2 – Brian Wojnarowski (E2) – 1615 pts
3 – Patrick Beaule (E3) – 1694 pts
4 – Mike Vandenhoek (E3) – 1694 pts
5 – Tyler Linton (E2) – 1776 pts
6 – Matthew Spigelmyer (EV) – 1795 pts
7 – Craig Kennedy (E2) – 1866 pts
8 – Allan Lachapelle (E1) – 1880 pts
9 – Chris Donald (EV) – 1978 pts
10 – Kevin Cockayne (EJ) – 2018 pts

When the rains came Saturday night, organizers and riders were hopeful that they would stop and hold off until the end of the race on Sunday, but by the time the last rider left for his second lap, it was clear that the skies were just starting to open up.

The rain poured for an hour and a half straight, only getting harder, before the last rider came off the track. Organizers were forced, for the safety of the riders and track marshals, to end the race early. Conditions were deteriorating quickly, and it simply was not worth the risk.

A scoring malfunction with the transponders may have cost Wojnarowski his second place overall, as when he came up for a sight lap on the extreme test, he crossed too close to the transponders and was checked in for his time. "Wojo" was one of the smoothest riders through the test, but due to this error he was given a test time of almost 12 minutes.

Manual scorers were at the check points, and the Sunday results might change with their input, but as it stands Wojnarowski is out of the top 10 for Sunday.

Sunday Pro Results
1 – Jake Stapleton (E2) – 1341
2 – Patrick Beaule (E3) – 1420
3 – Mike Vandenhoek (E3) – 1480
4 – Tyler Linton (E2) – 1639
5 – Jonathan Ryan (E1) – 1708
6 – Randy Griffith (E2) – 1738
7 – Allan Lachapelle (E1) – 1748
8 – Jim Olar (E2) – 1782
9 – Bruce Moffatt (EV) – 1814
10 – Matthew Spigelmyer (EV) 1825