words STEPH VETTERLY 2021 serie photos SHAN MOORE
After a successful six-round series in 2021 , the folks at US Sprint Enduro are signing up for another year of fun , bringing some new venues with them as well as expanding to eight rounds .
ON THE PEGS met with Billy and Nancy Schlag , founders of the series , to talk about the 2021 season and what changes have taken place for 2022 .
GIVE US AN IDEA OF WHAT ' S IN STORE FOR THE 2022 SEASON .
We ' re really excited for the 2022 season coming up here . We ’ ve been pouring a lot of time into it .
We have some new venues for 2022 that we ' d like to talk about . We ' re also continuing our series as a twoday format which we feel is the right way to do sprint enduro . Spreading the event out over two days is the closest or most feasible way that we can give you , the racer , the same feel as the ISDE . You ' re taking your competition over two days ; you go and compete as hard as you can on Saturday , rest Saturday night , and have to get up Sunday morning and do it all again , whereas if you do just a one-day format , it ' s just competing for that one day . It ' s a big difference competing one day versus two days .
In the sprint format , you completely exhaust yourself ; that ' s the goal when you go out and do your special tests - you want to give everything you have every time you ' re on the course and so to go through that on Saturday and then again on Sunday , I think it ' s a better test .
Saturday night gives you a chance to try figuring out everything that you can do to get that tenth of a second . I ’ ve been off podiums or lost overalls by tenths of a second or less .
CAN YOU GIVE ANY DETAILS ABOUT THE SCHEDULE AND NEW VENUES ?
Our first round is going to be outside of Seller ’ s South Carolina at Moree ' s Paradise ; it ’ s a completely virgin piece of ground , a dirt bike has never been ridden on it . It ' s a neat venue because it ' s a go-kart track venue so there ' s amenities like electric and water ; they have somewhere around 180 + sites available . The track is going to be awesome ; it ' s going to be a firm sand with lots of virgin woods and just a really massive grass track for the cross test .
We ' re going to South of the Border MX for our second round , which will also be our ISDE qualifier round . We ’ re looking really forward to that ; it ’ s a neat venue . The dirt is a sandy clay mix which is my favorite type of surface to ride on . It ' ll be a lot of big mature pine trees that we ' ll be routing the course through for the enduro test and the cross tests will run out through a mix of fields and motocross tracks .
ON THE PEGS // PAGE 58