VROOOM
Fairgrounds come alive with snowmobile racing
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
SKOWHEGAN — For Team Bouchard, snowmobile racing is a family affair.
Pro snowcross rider Simon Belzile of Sherbrooke, Canada, rides in a practice round Saturday at the Skowhegan Fairground. click to enlarge
The race team includes Jim and Cheryl Bouchard, their son Trevor, and their daughter, Courtney. The family calls Derry, N.H., home, but they are never there on winter weekends.
When the snow starts falling across the Northeast, the Bouchards pack their sleds and gear into a 42-foot trailer and hit the road.
"It's a full-time thing in the winter," Cheryl Bouchard said Saturday, as other members of the family competed in events at the two-day Rock Maple Racing Snocross at the Skowhegan Fairgrounds. "Racing is what we do every weekend for the whole season."
J.F. Brochet, a friend of the family, is the pro on the team, and back on the tour after a couple of years recuperating from a 2001 accident. Jim races in the sport class, Trevor in the junior, and Courtney in the 120 class.
Cheryl raced in the women's class last season — the team's first — but this year she is managing the operation.
"I got my trophy and retired," she said, laughing. "It's a lot harder than it looks."
How it looks is fast and flashy. Races are a colorful exhibition of speed and skill, where the riders are as visible as the machines themselves.
It is expensive to compete. The cheapest sled the Bouchards have is 10-year-old Courtney's miniature Arctic Cat, which goes 15-16 mph and costs about $1,300.
Speedometers on the bigger racing sleds typically go to 160 mph, and they have price tags to match.
Cheryl Bouchard said the family probably has $20,000 tied up in equipment already, and relies heavily on sponsors for support.
"We usually start right around March and April collecting sponsors for next year," Bouchard said.
Her husband works as an information technology manager, and she is a special education assistant, Bouchard said.
The family has been into snowmobiling for years.
Trevor, now 13, started riding when he was 4. He was clocked at 52 mph in a radar run when he was 6, and has advanced to faster and more powerful machines over the years.
An honor roll student, Trevor's list of interests — snow boarding, track and field, cross-country, in-line skating, and motocross — makes it plain he likes competition and edgy sports.
It was his interest in snowmobile racing that convinced she and her husband to form the team, Cheryl Bouchard said.
"It's my son's dream," Bouchard said. "Last year was his first year, and he did really well."
The Bouchards were in Skowhegan for the weekend because Chuck Minasalli, who is president of Rock Maple Racing, added the local fairgrounds to this year's circuit.
On Saturday, the crowds flocking to the scene appeared to bode well for the success of the event.
"I think it's a great location," Minasalli said. "Turnout's been great, I'm very pleased."
Rock Maple is a major racing promoter, and if you can picture a half-sized NASCAR event held on snow, ice, and slush, you will have a fair idea of what the Skowhegan fairgrounds looked like on Saturday.
Snowmobiles plastered with the names of sponsors packed every corner of the grounds and idled in the pit areas, worked on by riders and their support crews. Racers wearing numbers and bright racing suits limbered up before each run, donning helmets and goggles and revving their machines before blasting out of the gate in a cloud of smoke and snow.
Hard rock blared from loudspeakers, and the smells of fuel, exhaust, and fried food hung over the area.
The track itself was mounded with snow carved into a punishing obstacle course of jumps and sharply ramped corners, with hay bales scattered along the edges for safety.
Races were loud and exciting affairs, with the pro and semi-pro events providing the most spectacular action. Sleds dodged and cut through the snow and slush in the sprint for the finish line, leaping a dozen feet or more off the larger ramps before slamming into the ground again three to four seconds later. Occasionally, a sled crashed or slewed off the track.
The machines themselves were a far-cry from the sleds of yesteryear. Packed with sensors, gauges, and power, they were high-speed and high-tech.
An Arctic Cat F5 Firecat was typical of the breed; Its twin-cyclinder, liquid-cooled engine was capable of delivering about 104 horsepower. It had super-tough plastic skis buoyed by rugged gas-shocks, weighed about 447 pounds, and bristled with gauges and instruments.
The Bouchards said most performance sleds really require no modifications to handle the jumps, turns, and speeds of racing.
"They come from the factory pretty well ready to go," Jim Bouchard said.
Snowmobiling is one of the fastest-growing sports in the Northeast, and the proof was there in the Skowhegan grandstands. Hundreds of fans had paid to get in for the day. A majority were clearly snowmobilers themselves, cheering for their favorites on the tour.
Edward Daley of Portland was one, having driven up that morning with his own Ski-Doo in tow on a trailer behind his pickup.
"This is a lot of entertainment if you like this sort of thing," Daley said. "If you don't, well, it's a free country."
Jonathan Humphrey — 861-9252
jhumphrey@centralmaine.com