Due to the WEC round in Finland on the same weekend, Husaberg was represented by some top privateers and nationally supported riders.

Of course the local Austrian supported riders Erich Brandauer and Dieter Happ (both FE 570), both already veterans at the Erzberg Rodeo, and German rider Thomas Günther (FE 450) took on the challenge by riders from all over the world.

Two of those travelling far to Erzberg were Canadian CGRT Husaberg riders Shane Cuthbertson (FE 570) and Jared Thomas (FE 450).
Shane finished the Red Bull Romanaics Rally on a Husaberg FE 450 in 9th place last year, and was also supposed to rider Erzberg in 2008, but he broke his leg not long before the race, so his teammate Jared Thomas took his spot, who finished in 39th position, missing to make the finish just by seconds.

Another fast Husaberg rider at Erzberg XV was Slovenian Miha Spindler on a Husaberg FE 570. He made the finish in 2008 in 22nd position. He was the fastest Husaberg rider in the prologue finishing it in 10th position. Also all other Husaberg riders made the first row by making it into the top 50 (Günther 22, Cuthbertson 29, Brandauer 36, Thomas 46, Happ 51). Dieter Happ took the last spot in the first row because Cyril Despres didn't ride the Hare Scramble on Sunday.

On Sunday unfortunately it didn't run as smooth as in the prologue. Erich Brandauer was the only Husaberg rider to make the finish in time, he was the best Austrian rider finishing in 13th position. As only 21 riders made it to the finishline, next Husaberg rider in the results was Thomas Günther at checkpoint 16 in 31st position out of 500 started. He didn't have any major problems, but ran out of time coming to the next section, because of the overall time limit of 4 hours.
Dieter Happ was running not far behind Thomas Günther, but he decided to retire before checkpoint 15, because he was totally exhaustet. As he started with number 50, he also finished the race in 50th position.
Miha Spindler had to retire one checkpoint earlier and finished the race in 77th position.

For Shane Cuthbertson it was not a good day at all. He had a good start and was going with the top guys until he had a big crash before checkpoint 1 because of hitting a spile of the track boundaries which made him go over the bars. The real problem was, that this spile destroyed the bike's spark plug connector. It took Shane more than 45 minutes to get the bike running again, and in the meantime he was passed by almost all 500 participating riders. As he got going again he made a good pace, but in many passages it was too tight to overtake other riders, so he lost a lot of time. Nevertheless he overtook a couple of 100 riders and decided to retire before checkpoint 14, which meant 90th position overall.
Shane cought up with Jared Thomas, who was struggling a bit with the tough conditions, and Jared joined Shane in retiring at the entrance to "Carl's Dinner" passage. He finished in 97th position.
Both of them were quite disappointed after the race, but Shane will do the Red Bull Romaniacs again this August, and he for sure wants to come back to Erzberg next year, to finish the toughest offroad race in the world.


Pics: GEPA, D. Werner