89
sand he had on the other side of
his property and created what
he calls four-stroke dirt,” Ayers
explains. “Every promoter wants
to do a good job, so when you
have every rider saying they
love RedBud, then everyone
brings in sand like they do. I
raced in Colorado in 1977 at an
Inter-Am, and that dirt was so
hard-packed and cracked and
slippery it was almost unride-
able. Walk around the pits at
Thunder Valley and look at the
natural dirt there. Can you imag-
ine having to ride on that?”
On the other end, Unadilla
was once heralded for its amaz-
ing loam. Ayers says part of the
Unadilla legend was created by a
cattle auction up the road: track
owner Ward Robinson would buy
manure there and dump it on
the track, fertilizing the famous
tall grass the riders saw before
practice. Once the cattle auction
went away, so did the manure.
Unadilla has spent a lot of money
on a rock-sifting machine, which
gets rid of rocks but leaves the
dirt, but the sifting means the dirt
becomes powdery, which makes
it more rutted.
That’s the tricky part about
the whole deal. No matter how
careful the prep, you’re always
dealing with dirt, which will
largely do whatever it wants.
So how rough is too rough?
Depends on who you ask and
how they did that day. A few
hours after Dean Wilson told me
the opening races might have
been too gnarly, he grabbed
second overall at Spring Creek—
which, due to rain, might have
been the toughest track of all.
“I like rough tracks!” he
laughed. XRyan Vil-
lopoto is
the one
who really
got us to
widen the
tracks. He
was one of
the fi rst to
really look
for outside
lines.”JOHN AYERSFREDRICKSON