2015: Erzberg Had Four Winners After One Hill Stopped Them

Graham Jarvis and Alfredo Gomez reached the new Downtown section at Erzberg, where neither could ride through alone. The lead of the race was there to be won, but neither rider could simply take it and leave.

This was the Red Bull Hare Scramble at the 2015 Erzbergrodeo, in Austria. The course mixed the exposed rock of an iron mine with forest passages and steep climbs. It asked riders to keep moving through places where getting a motorcycle a few yards farther could become the whole job.

Jonny Walker had led early on his KTM. Trouble on a climb cost him time, and Jarvis and Gomez, both riding Husqvarnas, got ahead. But their progress brought them to Downtown, a new forest section that changed the race from a contest of speed into a problem none of them could solve alone.

Walker and Andreas Lettenbichler joined them there. Four riders with the same ambition now had the same obstacle between them and the rest of the course. They could keep trying separately, or use the strength of the people they had spent the day trying to beat.

They chose to help.

The group worked the motorcycles up the hill together. It took more than an hour to reach the top. Getting one bike through was not enough: the riders had to get the others through as well. The shared effort carried a consequence for the result. They would not turn it back into an ordinary sprint between rivals afterward.

Near the end, the organizers removed a checkpoint. The four continued together and reached the finish just inside the four hour limit. Jarvis, Gomez, Walker and Lettenbichler were declared joint winners.

Each took a turn lifting the trophy, and the four were listed as joint winners of the 2015 Red Bull Hare Scramble.

The day also brought a loss. Austrian broadcaster ORF reported that a 29-year-old spectator from Hungary, who was helping riders with a rope in a steep forest section, was killed when a boulder came loose and struck him.