The battle for overall individual honors will continue to the final day between Australia’s Daniel Milner (51, left in green and yellow jersey) and Team USA’s Ryan Sipes (24) with second-year Six Days rider Sipes holding a 35-second cushion going into the last day and last test. Photography by Mark Kariya
It seems that the only luck Team USA’s having at the 90th International Six Days Enduro in Kosice, Slovakia, is bad luck. As evidence, consider that the U.S. Junior World Trophy team lost Nick Davis with a bike problem early in the day, killing the chances of the defending champs to at least podium. Instead of what appeared to be a solid third, the team of four riders under 24 years old plummeted unceremoniously to the basement despite the continuing good results from Grant Baylor and the injured-but-still-riding Steward Baylor.
Late in the day, the FIM announced that the exclusions affecting eight different World Trophy team riders from five countries were being lifted after consideration of an appeal lodged yesterday by the French Federation of Motorcycling (FFM) “…against the decision of the FIM International Jury with the FIM International Interdisciplinary Court (CDI) in accordance with Article 4.5 of the FIM Discliplnary and Arbitration Code (CDA).”
In its appeal, the FFM petitioned the CDI for immediate stay of execution of the FIM International Jury’s decision in accordance with Article 4.8 [of the] CDA.
“In view of the urgent nature of the matter and the exceptional circumstances of the case, the CDI has decided to order stay of execution of the International Jury’s decision and reintegration of all eight riders disqualified into the competition on a provisional basis until further notice.
“This order is without prejudice to any decision by the CDI on the merits of the case.”
What this means is that Taylor Robert is officially back in the race and able to have his score counted toward’s the team’s total.
Unfortunately, the team is still down to four riders with the loss of Kailub Russell and Thad Duvall earlier so Robert’s results are moot anyway.
Reinstating the eight riders was a boon for France as half its team had been DQed. With those three scores now back in play, France took a huge step and leapfrogged past Australia and into the FIM World Trophy lead for the first time this week. The three-time and defending champs now go into the final day with a two-minute and four-second lead over Australia. Spain also benefitted greatly getting two riders back in the mix and move into third place, some 13 and a half minutes behind France.
Australia still leads the Junior World Trophy and Women’s World Trophy chases quite comfortably. Sweden and Italy appear likely to join Australia on the Junior podium while France and Sweden will probably step onto the Women’s podium—the closest they’ll have gotten to the defending champs all week.
Team USA’s GoFasters.com trio of Reid Brown, Nate Ferderer and Brian Garrahan remained fourth in the Club team standings, but with only three minutes cushion over a Scottish team, the guys need to avoid any last-day problems and make it to the finish in decent fashion.
The one huge bright spot for Team USA remains Ryan Sipes of the U.S. World Trophy team. Though he backed it down a bit to play it safe, finishing third in E2 behind France’s Loic Larrieu and Aussie Daniel Milner, sophomore Six Days rider Sipes remains 35 seconds ahead of Milner in the week-to-date results.
“I didn’t want to lose time, but also I wanted to play it a little bit safer today just so nothing stupid happened,” Sipes shared. “You could fall and lose 30 seconds in one test!”
Looking ahead, he added, “Going into tomorrow, we’ll just get over to the moto [final test], just be smart out there [and] it should be good.”
That, of course, is an understatement. Should he manage to hold onto the lead he first got on day 2, Sipes would make history as he’d become the first American to overall Six Days.
