entries making it to the first of three checkpoints .
Conditions were cold and rainy , which suited some riders , such as Pro rider Quinn Wentzel , who made his debut ride on the 2021 Rieju MR 300 Racing edition . Quinn spent much of the event battling for first with Ryder Leblond , while returning champion Nick Fahringer had to settle for a third-place finish , coming in only one checkpoint behind .
" The event was really good . It was really nasty conditions , slick and muddy . To be honest , that ' s right up my alley ," said Quinn . " I got off to a good start , led most of the first lap and got out ahead of everybody . Ryder [ LeBlond ] was stuck with me , so we were out ahead of everybody and were pushing each other .
I wasn ' t able to shake him very much ; the hard sections that came up , I was able to pull out a little bit , but he just got through them so quick and caught right back up in the single track . There was a lot of single track out there that was easy-flowing . That ' s not my strong suit , so I wasn ' t able to pull away there , but he ended up passing me right at the end of the first lap and I stuck with him until we got to the hard creek ; I think they called it " Nico ' s Creek ." It was probably like 300 yards uphill creek , just super gnarly , super slippery . It was just packed with lappers the whole creek . I got to there and passed Ryder immediately and pulled a pretty big gap . I got out of there and looked back and he was still quite a ways down stuck . That was a good feeling .
I rode that lap most of the way through leading , and then made some mistakes in a creek and saw he was behind me ; he had caught back up . He ended up passing me again , so I was stuck back behind him again and was kinda waiting until we got to Nico ' s Creek for that third lap and my plan was to catch him there and pass him again . We get there and all the lappers are cleared out , so he kinda just cruised right through .
I saw him up in front of me , but I couldn ' t catch him . After that , I tried to mount a final lap charge but my brakes clogged up with mud and started dragging . I had to stop and fix that , and ended up losing about three minutes , so I had to settle for second place . I was happy with that . I was happy to finish in front of Nick , who ' s going to be my main competition for the year in the championship , because I know Ryder ' s probably going to miss a couple events . I definitely want to win , but my main focus is to also beat Nick . I know we finished a couple minutes ahead of him , so I was really happy with