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Polaris RZR King of the UTVs Presented by HCR. ‘Full’ Report

Mirror, mirror on the wall, which is the hardest of them all?
Over the seven brutal hills, beyond the seventh rock crawl, in the Valley of Johnson is the King of the Hammers, the toughest of them all…

Well, the plan was to wait by the finish and interview the crews as they came in to have their moment of glory in front of the Jumbotron. It was a good plan but there was only one thing wrong with it… No one came back! You might have heard some rumours about the toughness of the Hammers but consider this for a moment, at 8am this morning with smiles and dreams of glory 34 Pro class UTVs started… by the time night had fallen 4 had made it back. 2 within time. And one Sportsman UTV. The rest are still out there.

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Mitch Guthrie has added a 6th title to his already substantial collection but behind… 2 ½ hours behind, the little green Kawasaki of Cody Currie came over the line. The Sportsman class has a couple of bypasses in the route so they don’t tackle the hardest trails but still, doing the course in a near standard Side by Side is pretty heroic. Being the only one in the class to get back is legendary! “The Monster Energy Walker Evans Racing Teryx 800 has Walker Evans shocks and Long Travel Industries suspension but apart from that it is standard. It still had the factory speed limiter on it so we could only do 49mph on the fast stuff but with the shocks and suspension we could keep up with the RZRs in the whoops. We even passed a few. We spent about 10 minutes in a bottleneck in Crowbar but we just kept going and one by one we just passed broken cars. Our plan was to just keep going no matter what and that’s what we did. We snapped the winch rope so had to learn how to tie knots pretty quickly but that was the only downtime we had. The Kawasaki might not be fast but it is tough and tough is what you need for KOH!” Tomorrow his dad John Currie will take on the Every Man Challenge [EMC], the second tier class of KOH. He is the reigning champion.

At an hour and twenty minutes behind, Dean Bulloch was the only other driver to make it back before the 8 hour cut off but man of the moment, as it has been for 6 out of the 7 years the UTV race has been run is Mitch Guthrie. “The plan was to get ahead of as many cars as we could before Crowbar so we passed quite a few other cars at speeds we probably shouldn’t have been going at, but then we caught up with Branden Sims and had a brilliant fight. I got by him on a tighter line that he missed and then he did the same to me a couple of climbs later but then we heard he was out and it wasn’t so much fun after that, we just had to do another lap and get back here.”

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It feels a bit lazy to leave it at that… but that is all the stories there is right now. Tomorrow the EMC runs and the main event is on Friday. The live streaming coverage is excellent. The link is on www.ultra4racing.com It will be epic!

Words by: Rob Pritchard // UTVUnderground.com
Photos by: Jason Zindroski // UTVUnderground.com

OFFICIAL RESULTS

PRO CLASS

POS Class Car# Driver Name Start Lap 1 L1ADJ Lap 2 L2 ADJ Total Time
POS Car# Driver Name Start Lap 1 Lap 2 Total Time
1 1 MITCH GUTHRIE 8:06:00 9:39:54 14:26:22 6:20:22
2 1909 DEAN BULLOCH 8:00:30 10:02:22 15:49:15 7:48:45
3 1965 JON CROWLEY 8:01:30 10:05:13 16:07:00 8:05:30
4 1295 CHAD HUGHES 8:04:30 10:01:36 16:44:00 8:39:30
DNF 2 CASEY CURRIE 8:02:30 10:58:39
DNF 12 TERRELL GAUNY 8:03:00 10:33:40
DNF 20 RICKEY BRINEY 8:06:30 10:07:25
DNF 77 SHANE CHIDDIX 8:08:00 10:08:59
DNF 313 TROY BIGELOW 8:00:00 10:00:44
DNF 669 BRIAN KING 8:04:30 9:53:53
DNF 1313 CJ BYNUM 8:07:30 10:23:00
DNF 1523 AARON CLARK 8:01:30 10:28:09
DNF 1913 BRANDEN SIMS 8:02:30 9:38:30
DNF 1916 CODY NYGREN 8:05:00 11:14:07
DNF 1919 BLAKE VAN DE LOO 8:08:00 9:49:29
DNF 1920 JOHN DUCKWORTH 8:02:00 9:53:13
DNF 1923 TODD ROMANO 8:00:00 10:15:08
DNF 1929 LANSE CHOURNOS 8:05:30 10:06:12
DNF 1933 RYAN BERGAMINI 8:05:00 10:25:11
DNF 1939 MATT HAMILTON 8:08:30 10:13:55
DNF 1948 DARELD LUSHER 8:00:30 10:11:16
DNF 1950 BURT JENNER 8:03:30 10:02:05
DNF 1951 MELVIN WADE, IV 8:03:30 11:09:52
DNF 1956 HEATH FRAZIER 8:07:00 9:58:45
DNF 1958 ANDREW GORMAN 8:04:00 10:46:46
DNF 1963 FRANK BUSHMAN 8:04:00 10:15:55
DNF 1973 JOEY HYER 8:05:30 12:07:09
DNF 1991 EVAN ENGELHARDT 8:06:30 10:36:27
DNF 1994 BC VAUGHT 8:02:00 10:15:16
DNF 4421 ERIK MILLER 8:03:00 9:43:39
DNF 5252 BILL BAIRD 8:07:00 10:09:03
DNF 1224 MATT DOW 8:01:00 DNF
DNF 1949 BRUCE JENNER 8:07:30 DNF DNF DNF
DNF 1961 CHRIS BARNETT 8:01:00 DNF DNF DNF
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SPORTSMAN CLASS

POS Class Car# Driver Name Start Lap 1 L1ADJ Lap 2 L2 ADJ Total Time
1 SPORT 22 CODY CURRIE 8:10:30 10:07:06 1:56:36 15:37:34 5:30:28 7:27:04
DNF SPORT 17 CHRIS LEATHERS 8:13:00 10:20:57 2:07:57
DNF SPORT 32 IVAN KLEIN 8:09:00 DNF
DNF SPORT 727 CLINT SCRUGGS 8:12:30 10:44:28 2:31:58
DNF SPORT 918 JASON MERRELL 8:13:00 10:43:46 2:30:46
DNF SPORT 970 BRIAN FISHER 8:09:30 10:20:17 2:10:47
DNF SPORT 981 BRAD WITBECK 8:10:30 10:28:03 2:17:33
DNF SPORT 1915 BRIAN HOGUE 8:11:00 10:20:52 2:09:52
DNF SPORT 1928 FRED BRAYTON 8:12:00 12:04:54 3:52:54
DNF SPORT 1972 CHRIS CHAPMAN 8:09:00 10:11:23 2:02:23
DNF SPORT 1975 MICHAEL NAPP 8:11:30 10:32:37 2:21:07
DNF SPORT 1980 JOHN CIANCI 8:12:00 11:25:18 3:13:18
DNF SPORT 1982 MATTHEW GREGG 8:09:30 10:27:17 2:17:47
DNF SPORT 6148 JONATHAN DAWES 8:12:30 10:43:49 2:31:19
DNF SPORT 7212 BRETT SNYDER 8:11:00 11:47:00 3:36:00
DNF SPORT 1927 DAVID R HARVICK DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS
DNF SPORT 1976 JOHN NEIBOLD DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS

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