This past weekend the United States Cross Country Snowmobile Racing Association held their annual Red Lake 500. The
American Snowmobiler staff battled the bitter cold along with a record number of teams and driver's at this year's event which took place in Thief River Falls, Minn., at the Seven Clans Casino. For those not familiar with cross-country racing, this event is one of the toughest in the snowmobiling world. It covers close to 500 miles of ditches, woods, rivers, swamps and has some of the nastiest terrain you can imagine.
For the fourth time in his career, Ski-Doo rider Bryan Dyrdahl won the RydeFX sponsored Pro Open class and the FXR Pro 600. Dyrdahl blew away the competition in 3 days of sunny, but -10 degree cross-country racing. Josh Davis and Troy Hanson finished second and third respectively in the Pro Open class. Davis also finished second in the Pro 600 class followed by Greg Hyde. In the semi-pro ranks, Cory Grant took home the checkered flag on a Ski-Doo, followed by Bryce Buchanan on an Arctic Cat and Sam Vandeputte on a Ski-Doo.
A special media class was added to twelve other classes for this year's I-500 and was sponsored by Arctic Cat.
AmSnow fielded three media riders for the race aboard an Arctic Cat F5. Each one of our riders rode one day of the 3-day race. An in-depth article of our cross-country racing experience will be documented in the Spring 2008 issue of
American Snowmobiler. In the meantime, you can check out full race results and pictures at
www.usccracing.com or
on our site here.