Noah Kepple on 2018 XC 300
 

Just finished 3rd at the King of Motos night race.

Awesome! congrats

I believe he ended up 4th overall for the combined KOM results, Max Gerston edged him out for third. I watched his interview and despite some issues in the final race he seemed pretty upbeat and focused on the fun stuff. Good to see. Not sure how many other gassers were in the field but I know local AZ up and comer James Flynn was out there on his 2018 XC 250 as well.

I know the commentators were horrible. I was yelling at my screen trying to watch it and listen to them. I swear the one guy had never actually swung his leg over a bike before.
I caught them a few times calling Noah Kepple's bike a KTM.. :eek::mad:

Great race. Navigation looked killer hard.

Lists him on a KTM.

http://www.cyclenews.com/2018/02/art...motos-results/

Furthers my earlier comment.
A bunch of 12 year old flatbillers could have commentated that race better.

Yes, the commentary was pretty painful at times.


Full results here:

https://www.ultra4racing.com/schampa...verall-results

I have to tip my hat to Cody Webb as the only pro to finish the entire race in the allowed time Sunday. All of the others did the same as the amateurs.

Agreed, though I am curious to hear more details. I have little doubt that Cody Webb wouldn't have still beaten the field, likely by a large margin, but I am hearing that there was a bit of a debacle with the missed checkpoint #2. Basically every pro but David Kamo missed it. Apparently several riders later went back to cross the check after learning that they had missed it. There was some confusion about whether or not checks needed to be completed in order, and I never heard if cody ended up going through that check or not. But I read that some riders claimed to have expended upwards of 45 minutes getting back to the missed check, but at the time of turning back, were not far off of Cody's pace.

Unfortunate circumstances and it would be interesting to see what the written rule (if any) is on this matter for KOM.

I messaged CycleNews about that mistake. They half fixed it now. Says at the bottom that he was on a Gasser but in the story it still says KTM.

There is no written rulebook, it's pretty seat of the pants rule wise. In previous years missing a check was a DQ, this year I guess it was a penalty which I'm sure was covered in the riders meeting but if you've ever been to a KOM riders meeting they are a bit hard to follow. Just look at some of the top five pro rider's instagram posts and read between the lines to get an idea of the "organization"

IMO no one finished that race 100% but they had to award results to someone...

In three years this was my first time not finishing and honestly I think it's kind of BS that anyone who didn't ride all the course and get all the checks would be considered a finisher. No one does this shit for participation trophies.

I love the event and consider any personal failures incurred during participation my responsibility but the event could go a long ways with some simple changes to make things more clear to the competitors.

Is James Flynn the youngster riding for Moto Center? If so we rode most of this race together both the night and the long race and made the same dumb mistakes. He was also pitted next to us at the Rev Limiter. Cool kid and cool family, if he sticks with it he'll make a name for himself.

Thanks a ton for the insight, I do appreciate it. I definitely had looked at riders posts, and most just said that they had nothing to say, which indicated to me they were not happy with some aspects. Max Gerston made it pretty clear he would have liked to say some things, but he mostly kept it to himself when getting his 3rd place trophy.

It does put declaring a winner in a weird spot when you have someone miss a check but ride the "entire" course, but have others who made the check but didn't get as far. It raises a bunch of what ifs, and even during the live coverage Jimmy Lewis said that any rider who completes all checks is ahead of a rider who does not (with no mention of penalties). But then again Cody was the only one who made it out for the (shortened) final loop so he surely made more checks than anyone else, but I think a 15 minute penalty was generous looking at that section that was missed.

A couple guys in my riding group went out and did it, and I still need to get the run down from them. One of them actually won the long race for amateurs so it would be interesting to get their take. It seems like it could go a long way to have some rules written down beforehand and not have sections of the course running so close to each other with people racing by GPS. Jimmy says he'd not trying to trick anyone, but it's easy to see how the check got missed and how people ended up backward on the course with how it was laid out. But navigation is the name of the game.

And yes, James Flynn is young gun riding the Moto Center XC250. If he continues at the current rate, he'll be dicing with the pros soon enough. I don't know them personally, but rode with him and his dad in a big group about a year and a half ago just before his first season in A class in AMRA. He was pretty good then, but his skills have skyrocketed since, and now he's battling for top 10 overalls locally with some very talented guys. Definitely a cool family from what I experienced, as well

Yup you nailed it. :)

Vxzeroknots are you going to the NHHA at superstition mtns? I'll be there as a spectator. I'd like to meet you sometime.

I'd don't know if I'd ever want to meet him.. I'm afraid I'd be demoralized when I see how well he can ride compared to my tepid attempts. :eek:

Damn, I wish! I'm already committed to a Ryan Young trials class that weekend.

I'm even worse in person anyway. Wanting to make Round 4 and 5 though. Rounds 3 would be way cool but I need to take a break from bike prepping for a minute...