Racing
2003 ATVA/AMA
Grand National Cross-Country Series
Ballance wins Ohio mud bog
Even Mother Nature can't stop three-time GNCC champ
By Jason Weigandt
Jun.
4, 2003 – Rain has been a constant on the 2003 ATVA Grand National Cross
Country tour, and when the skies opened up at the start of round seven of the
series, the Wiseco John Penton GNCC in Ohio, the riders knew they were in for
another tough one.
And what they got was more of the same: slick soil, mud stuck to their ATVs, and Bill Ballance taking the win. But even Ballance, the three-time series' champ, admitted it was tough. "This thing was awful, it was the worst one this year," said the Klotz/LRD/Maxxis/Moose-backed Ballance. "That's cross country racing though. You need to be there in all conditions."
Ballance has been this season, taking six overall wins in seven races. At the Wiseco John Penton GNCC, he battled the conditions, as well as Four-Stroke Tech's Chad DuVall, before winning again. "I told my mechanic before this started it was going to be a real long day. I'm just glad it's over," said DuVall. "Billy and I battled it out all day, even on the last lap. But the better man won today."
Ballance won the overall and the Pro Class, while DuVall claimed second overall and the Pro Production win on his Four-Stroke Tech/Maxxis/MSR-backed Honda. Third overall went to Open A Class rider Joe Kish, who rode the race of his life to beat a host of pro riders on adjusted time.
"We've had so much bad luck," said Joe's dad, Joe Sr. "It finally went our way. He got through a lot of bottle necks and made up time."
Kish's strong result was totally unexpected, even though the mud always makes the races a strange affair. Several top contenders, like Team Safari's Matt Smiley, East Coast ATV's Chris Borich and Duncan's Brad Page were nowhere to be seen at the finish of the race, all victims to the mud's brutal nature. Regardless, Kish has proven himself to be a contender when the going gets tough.
Yoshimura/Roll/Nac's/IMS-backed William Yokley grabbed the holeshot on his Suzuki LT-Z400, but before long Ballance had moved to the front on his two-stroke machine. His lead was short-lived too, when HMF's Johnny Gallagher, a noted mud specialist from Ohio, took the spot from him.
But Ballance wasn't worried about speed; he knew it was a race to just survive. At the end of the lap one he pulled into the pits for a change of gloves and goggles, while Gallagher sped by for another lap. His goggles were wasted though, and he took so much mud in his eyes on lap two that he eventually had to pull off and have his vision checked.
"When you get a scratch on your eye, and it's that bad, your eye just shuts down," said Gallagher's father John Sr. "He will be okay now, but it looked like we were going to have a really good weekend."
With clean equipment, Ballance got back to the front, but he was chased by DuVall and Greg Trew, the East Coast ATV rider from Florida. Trew was riding well, coming up from a bad start to pass DuVall and Ballance in the pits on the second lap. Trew could have had his first career GNCC podium in the bag, but vision problems and bottlenecks (what else?) began to wreak havoc on him.
At one point, DuVall and Trew collided hard, and the hit was so bad that DuVall thought he had broken his leg. He was able to recover though, keep his vision clean and ride smart. He even tried to track down Ballance, and with new bottlenecks and lines opening up he had a shot at it.
"You would try a line that worked one lap, and then the next lap it was three feet deep," said Ballance. "These guys were all over me. It was back and forth."
Behind them, Sport Rider Polaris's Steve Holbert, a former winner of the Blackwater 100, moved from the second row of the pro start grid into third on the track. "The bottlenecks were bad, but as long as you kept your momentum up the rest of it was okay," said Holbert, another mud specialist. "On the second lap I got to a huge bottleneck and got out first, I think I made up my time there."
At the finish, DuVall decided to go into survival mode, allowing Ballance to take another win. Kish's strong riding put him into third overall based on time, while Holbert and Four-Stroke A rider Jeff Stoess rounded out the top five overall.
"I'm just glad it's over," said Ballance on the podium.