News from November 25, 2004 issue

Motorcyle race could attract 3,000
The first time Darrin Tabor held his Copperhead Run Hare Scramble motorcycle race near Salem last summer, area filling station parking lots were full and convenience stores ran out of ice.

"We had about 1,000 people last time," said Tabor, a Marion real estate broker and bike enthusiast who's built a 12-mile track on the Crittenden and Livingston county line.

"This time we'll have well over twice that many. If the weather is good, we could have 3,000 people," he said.

The next race is just around the corner, Sunday, Dec. 5 and Tabor is working feverishly to finalize all of the logistics for the event which will attract about 800 riders.
"We had about all we could handle last time and this race is really going to push us harder," he said.

Bikers from across the country will converge on Salem for the one-day event. However, many racing teams roll into the area well ahead of the starting gun.
"They will come in here in big campers and tractor-trailers. Some of these professional riders earn almost a million dollars a year just racing," Tabor added.
Getting the American Motorcycle Association's Mid South Hare Scramble Series to sanction the Copperhead Run has been a three-year effort that is still very much in progress.

Tabor and his racing buddy Steve Dickerson started out to develop a three-mile practice course for themselves. Now, 36 months later, they've worn out two chain saws, a shovel, an ax and an ATV carving out the winding track that crosses Dry Creek and laces in and out of heavy forests, hills and hollows. Bikers will run gas tank deep through the muddy creek, jump 20 feet into the air over terraced hillsides and race up to 60 mph through clearings as they complete the two-hour endurance style race. Top prizes are cash for the pros and trophies for amateurs. There will be 24 different divisions with dozens of bikes in each one, most all of them running on the same course at the same time.

"These guys will be going 30 mph through the woods and it's nothing for them to run into a deer or something else," Tabor said. "We'll have an ambulance on site."
The track ribbons through 600 acres of property owned by Remet Properties, LLC. Much of it was recently timbered, leaving treacherous areas for man, beast or bike. Some of the hills are nearly straight up and curves are turned tighter than a bobby pin.

There are no warmup laps so the drivers are running blind on the first lap. With so many bikes zooming over the course, Tabor says the track changes with every lap.

"The first time you run through a little mud puddle you might not think anything about it," explains Tabor. "But the next time you go through it, you might be footpeg deep because 800 others bikes have gone through the puddle since you did the first time."

The name of the game is to finish as many laps as possible in the allotted 120 minutes. The best riders will get four maybe five laps in before the checkered flag. Tabor hopes they run no more than four which would give his course a big boost on the difficulty scale, an attractive feature on the hare scramble series.
"Some of the first-time amatuers will have trouble making one lap, but the pros will get four, maybe five."

The race is high-tech, too. Each rider has a bar-coded sticker on his helmet. Every time he passes the starting line, a laser reads the tag, identifying the rider and automatically posts on a digital scoreboard his division and place at that particular time in the race.

"It's pretty amazing how it all works," Tabor said.

Bikes and ATVs from youth model 50cc rigs to 250s and 450s will share the course between 9 a.m., and 3 p.m. Bikers generally bring sizeable pit crews because they need to refuel and often repair their equipment during the long race.

Prior to this race near Salem, the nearest sanctioned event was Cadiz or Greenville. The race Dec. 5 is the fifth on the Mid South Series this winter. Other races are held in Alabama, Tennessee and Indiana.

Tabor will have 15 workers and more volunteers helping put on the event. At his first race in July, there were 400 bikes on a 9.7-mile course. This time, the stakes are higher and the numbers greater.

"We're sanctioned for two races a year, one in the summer and one in the winter," he said. "It's a big attraction and there's going to be a lot of people coming in here for these races."

If the event draws anywhere close to 3,000, it will certainly be one of the area's largest one-day events. This time, Tabor hopes the convenience stores are prepared and don't run out of ice.