Stefan - The KIWI

[denill]

By Alexandra Thorogood

We arrived in Borno, Bergamo for the fourth round of World Enduro Champs last Monday to start walking the special tests.

There was one Enduro Test up a rocky river bed with loose stones moving everywhere. It graduated into the forest on a narrow goat track with lots of tree roots and mossy mud, then finished up a fast rocky riverbed. The Cross test was on a sloped grassy paddock with many double jumps. The Extreme test started in the town of Borno at the Timber Mill where riders had to ride over a stack of undulating logs more than 200m long, down a river bed, up an underground water drain which finished with a man made timber ramp launching the riders to a muddy uphill to the finish.

Rain daily leading up to the race left the hard ground quite wet and slippery. Further thunderstorms dumped a lot of water on Friday night, and the rain continued all day on Saturday. Merriman got off to a good start setting the fastest time overall in the cross test. Then in the following Enduro test he crashed and lost a bit of time in the loose stones. Bad luck struck in the following section of trail. Merriman was riding along a hillside and a loose boulder rolled down the hill and hit his front wheel smashing off his front brake callipers. He then attempted to repair them as best he could with some wire in his bumbag. The he arrived late staring the cross test for the second lap. Starting after Smets, he was going well and passed Smets three minutes into the test when the front brake came free and got stuck in the wheel causing him to crash. He ties up the loose cables and rode as safely as possible to the end of the tests and on the to the next time control but was 12 minutes late to the time checkand so incurred a 12 penalty to his special test times. He decided to continue even though he knew he wouldn’t take points for the day so that he could do some suspension testing in the difficult enduro test. With the 12 minute penalty he finished 20th in the class and got one point.

Heavy rain on Saturday night promised another difficult day. Merriman had difficult getting grip in the slippery tests and started outside the top five after the first lap. Sun then came out and dried the tests and Merriman’s times improved. By the final lap he was in fourth position with only 2 seconds separating him and KTM rider, Aro for third. Merriman set the fastest times in the cross test but lost time in the loose stone enduro test. In the Final Extreme Test, Merriman set the fastest time scratch for the weekend in the Extreme Test earning him the BMW Extreme Test award for the weekend. Merriman was 9 seconds faster than Aro but needed 11 seconds to arrive ahead of Aro in third position. In the meanwhile, Yamaha rider Johnny Aubert broke the engine after the extreme test and couldn’t manage to ride the last section of trail back to the paddock to finish the race. But miraculously his bike arrived back at the paddock 8 minutes late, earning him 13th position and 8 points and moving Merriman up to third position in the Sunday E2 classification. However there will be a protest launched at the Jury this evening that Aubert should be DNFed as he didn’t complete all the course. Hopefully they can get information from the control check at the top of the mountain before the finish.

Now we head to Treviso for Italian Champs Next weekend.

[denill]

Hi all

Bad luck continued at the Merriman camp on the weekend at the penultimate round of the Italian Enduro championships.

Stefan crashed heavily in the slippery first special test of the day on Saturday and dislocated his right shoulder. The pain was too immense for him to continue and so he had two DNF’s for the weekend. Fortunately he managed to get assistance immediately and get his shoulder popped back in within minutes of the crash.

Hopefully this will have minimised the damage from the crash. It is the first time he has suffered dislocation of the right shoulder. Sunday he spent the day icing and resting the strained ligaments and will depart Tuesday 26th July for Australia to compete in the Australian 4 Days of Enduro next week. It was a horrible blow for Merriman, who was leading the Italian Overall Enduro Championship up until halfway through the round.

Flooding and mud in the last round caused him difficulty and he lost valuable points in the championship and now two further DNF’s have put him out of the running to take the title for the seventh year in a row.

Merriman now will focus his energy on returning to winning form for the A4DE next week.

Regards

From Lexy

[NordieBoy]

GWS enduro dude.

[denill]

By Lexy Thorogood
Australian Four Day Enduro, Coffs Harbour AUSTRALIA 4-9th July 2007

Merriman's 2007 A4DE campaign got off to a good start on Day 1 as he led the outright classification at the end of the first day ahead of International guest, british David Knight and Local Champion, AJ Roberts. Merriman's bike arrived from Italy on the Monday prior to the race with one day to set it up he realised that his suspension was not suited to the conditions. Set on the softest setting, Merrimans forks did not offer too much give in the first two tests of the day with the cold temperatures, where he lost time to his rivals.

On Day Two, he crashed in the first Enduro test, loosing 17 seconds to Knight and a repeat on Day three saw him loose another 15 seconds to the UK Champion. At the end of three days he was 30 seconds adrift of Knight for the outright lead in the A4DE, despite winning back a lot of lost time in the following enduro tests as the temperatures warmed. Sunny weather greeted the riders on Day 4, which looked to be a great day for the final motocross. However by lunchtime dark clouds threatened the sky and rainclouds loomed.

The 450cc heat was scheduled for the third last race of the day. the 125cc, 250cc 2 stroke and 250 four stroke heats were raced in the dry, where Hollis, Kearney and Hutton posted the fastest times of the day (up to 50 seconds faster than race leader David Knight). At the commencement of the 450cc heat, the heavens opened up and the riders battled with heavy downpours and a very slippery wet track. AJ Roberts led from the start followed closely by David Knight. Merriman got a bad start and crashed on the first lap was in 15th position before the first lap cold be completed.

Back on the gas, Merriman passed several riders in the sloppy conditions but posted a shocking final moto time to drop to third place in the outright standings after the 4 days finished. Second place outright went to Chris Hollis was more than 70 seconds faster than Merriman in the final moto as Merriman struggled in the wet conditions in his 450cc moto, whilst Hollis enjoyed a fast, dry run in the 250cc 4 stroke heat.

Despite not capturing the outright win he was hoping for, Merriman proved the new Aprilia 450RXV certainly is the fastest bike in the 450cc class winning ahead of Current Australian Champion, AJ Roberts on a Honda CRF450.

Outright A4DE Coffs Harbour
1. David Knight (KTM 450)
2. Chris Hollis (Yamaha 250 4S)
3. Stefan Merriman (Aprilia 450)
4. AJ Roberts (Honda 450)
5. Glenn Kearney (Suzuki 250 2S)

450cc class
1. Stefan Merriman (Aprilia)
2. AJ Roberts (Honda)
3. Shannon Lewry (Yamaha)
4. Darren Lloyd (Husqvarna)
5. Blake Hore (Yamaha)
For full results see www.a4de.com
Merriman will now fly to New York to contest the next Round of World Enduro Championships on the 21st-22nd July.

[denill]

Hi All

Please find attached the English press releases from Aprilia about the World Enduro Champs in New York last weekend 21-22 July.

Spoke to Stefan today from Canada where he is preparing for the Canadian GP.

The WEC USA event was really tough. Stefan said that on the first day the extreme test was so tough that he had to get off the bike and push it to get through in some places and so did many other riders. After day 1, it was clear that with these very difficult special tests and tough terrain that four laps was going to be too much on Sunday and the condition of the Enduro test had deteriorated so much that almost all the riders deemed it too dangerous for competition.

The riders appealed to the international jury to reduce Day 2 to three laps given the level of deterioration of the course but this was rejected and so all the riders signed a petition (with the exception of two riders) to demand the course be reduced to three laps. This was ingnored by the clerk of the course and the jury and the riders commenced Day 2 knowing that they would have a very tough day ahead. Not long after the riders fears were well validated when two riders had serious crashes in the enduro test and had to be airlifted to hospital by helicopter.

These riders had to produce a credit card to pay 10000 US$ upfront to recieve assistance (which can be later claimed back on insurance through the federation). However from our experience this can take a long time (Stefan took two years to recover 80% of the expenses for his spleenectomy in 2005). So it was a very costly mistake by the jury to ignore the concerns of the riders. This was clear by the fact that there was on average, only 10 riders finish in each class on the second day Sunday.

Stefan ran into problems of his own on Sunday where he smashed his front brake caliper off when knocked by a moving rock in the extreme test. The drama cost him close to 40 seconds, which was repaired in the following service time check. Stefan recouped a lot of the lost time in the following tests but finished the day 6 seconds short of fourth position, where he would have finished if it weren't for the brake incident which pushed him back to 6th position in the E2 class.

Stefan had a quick look at the tests in Canada and has confirmed that three tests for WEC are different to the ones used last year. He will spend the next few days walking the tests and then preparing the bike accordingly for the conditions. The lakes area of Ontario has typically Finnish conditions of sandy terrain mixed with rocks and roots.

Regards
Lexy Thorogood