Untitled Document

Local Rednecks Kick Butt in Ford's Sport Trac Challenge

by andy baillargeon & tommy kirchhoff

Y'all don't know who Children of the Wasatch are, but them's four kin we can all be proud of. Not long ago, the Kin flew on one of them jet airplanes to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to compete in Ford's fancy big Sport Trac Challenge. Sponsored only by Bad Ass Coffee of Park City, Dustin Sturges, Scott Wilson, Jaima Anderson and Tony Larson tore it up somethin' fierce skiing, kayaking, climbing, and mountain biking against real professional athletes who had sponsorships like K2, Outside and Ford.

The Kin landed in New Hampshire on a Friday. They were greeted by some Ford folks, and given a shiny new, Ford Sport Trac pickup truck. It was real perty, and the Ford folks were probly a tad concerned about just handin' the keys over to a group of 24-year olds like Team Wasatch.

Now we love a good truck, but the Kin said they got in this four-door spaceship and it had one of them global PMS navigation systems. Then the dang thing started talkin' to 'em! Team Wasatch checked in with the officials, barely made it through the orientation, then headed directly to a nearby tavern.

"I figure you should race the way you train; get loaded, go out and ski the next day," professed Team Captain Dustin Sturges. So the Wasatch Kin, sturdy with sea-level oxygen, trained well into the night. After a few dozen drinks, a carnage of hand-rolled cigarettes and a refreshing two hour sleep, the team awoke and fired up for Sturges' 7 a.m. start time in the backcountry ski event. Sturges competed hard and finished a respectable second place. With lungs that look like bags of Kingsford charcoal, he couldn't quite overcome professional Luke Miller.

Scott Wilson on the other hand weren't even dewey-eyed over the previous night's session. He came out and whooped some kayaking ass, taking first place by over a minute and a half (that's a long time in dog years). The Wasatch Kin were in second place at the end of the day-and it was prit-near obvious that these games were rigged. While Wilson's second place finisher was only behind him by 44 points, Sturges second place put him 140 points behind Luke Miller. The backcountry skiing would be the only event with such a spread, and dammit if itwernt more than the Kin could overcome.

The climbing and biking events wern't 'til Sunday, so another night of honky-tonkin' was in the cards. Good and pissed-off about Ford's dirty, stinkin', yella-bellied scoring system, Team Wasatch decided it was time for some real fun. The Kin found an open dirt parking lot, punched the gas and cranked out a few donuts. Sturges, a trained stunt driver, started feelin' like the Duke Boys. He spun some good ones, then dropped team members Tony Larson and Jaima Anderson off at the lodge. Then he thought he'd give'er another go.

"We were actually sober, we just decided to spin some donuts," Sturges said. "I decided to do one more; the front tire popped and the truck just flopped over on its side. It was those damn horrible Firestone tires." Our guess is that it was probly a bit more of the indian, and not so much the arrow.

Because of the accident, Sturges was denied any prizes for his second place finish and $2000 was deducted from the team's winnings for truck repair. The team took the misfortune in stride and just felt lucky for the comp'ed tickets and fancy hotel accommodations for the event. "At least they didn't kick us out of the competition," Sturges praised.

The final day started with the climbing competition and a knee-slappin' performance by Jaima Anderson. Again, it was obvious this thing was rigged. Anderson schooled all three of the boys, but was only given second place. Ed Crossland was awarded first place, even though everyone saw this bubba pull on every fricken piece of gear, including the cameraman's rope.

Tony Larson was the final Wasatch competitor in the mountain biking. He rode dang hard to third place behind a beastly competitor that the others affectionately called the android. Pete Swenson is ten foot tall if he's an inch, with legs of steel and eyes that can pierce your very soul. You may have seen him wandering the streets of Park City. Swenson took a nasty digger right out of the start gate, spent six-minutes fixing a flat tire, and still lapped all three of the other competitors on the three-mile course.

"I think we had one hell of a showing for doing 12oz curls and chain smoking cigarettes on the Colorado River two weeks before the competition," Sturges said.

So four Utah rednecks (sponsored by Bad Ass) go up against three other teams of professional athletes. The Utahns drink and smoke, roll a truck, and they still whipped all their asses. The stats for the competition can be found on that Internet that everybody's talkin' about. Go to www.sporttracchallenge.com, and click on the "White Mountains." There you can see that the Children of the Wasatch weren't too far off first place; and if the yella, milktoast-coward judges of the Sport Trac Challenge wouldna rigged it, the Wasatch Kin woulda won.