Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Serving the Hub of the North since 1960
Volume 56 • Issue 5
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Bucket list wish denied BY IAN GRAHAM EDITOR@THOMPSONCITIZEN.NET
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Cory and Quenton Grant admit there was a time one thing mattered most of all when it came to snowmobile racing. “I’m the older one and at times it didn’t matter where I finished as long as it was one place in front of him,” Cory says about his brother. The Grants, both former pro champions on the CanAm cross-country snowmobiling circuit – Cory in 1999-2000 and Quenton in 2002-2003 – were hoping this year to fulfill a bucketlist dream by competing in the United State X-Country Snowmobile Racing circuit’s I-500 race from Winnipeg to Willmar, Minnesota, scheduled for Feb. 10-13 but then cancelled Feb. 1 due to deteriorating snow conditions. The race began in the 1960s, Cory says, and continued until the mid-1980s. After not running for a few years, it was resurrected and continued until the mid-1990s, around the time the Grant brothers got into snowmobile racing. Attempts to run it in 2015 and again this year have been thwarted due to a lack of snow. “It’s something that we’ve been dreaming of for years and it’s never happened,” said Quenton on Jan. 27, before the event was cancelled. The brothers were going to enter the I-500 last year before it was cancelled and they entered a 300-mile race that took its place, with both Cory and Quenton finishing. The version of the race held for several years up until last year was a three-day circuit of a cross-country loop in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Cory has entered that nine times with his best result being first place in his class, while Quenton has done it
Thompson Citizen photo by Ian Graham Quenton Grant, left, and his brother Cory, right, were hoping to compete in a four-day 500-mile cross-country snowmobile race from Winnipeg to Willmar, Minnesota from Feb. 10-13 that was cancelled by race organizers on Feb. 1 due to deteriorating snow conditions. twice. Only about 40 per cent of racers finished the race in a given year. Riders were allowed to make any repairs they needed to their snowmobiles during the race, but only if they had the parts with them and accomplished the repairs without any outside help. “The one year, the last year that [Quenton] actually did the [three-day] I-500, at one point we were first and second and he crashed and hurt himself pretty bad and I ran out of gas,” Cory recalls. “Anythign can happen.” The time to cross the crossborder I-500 route off their bucket list is running out for the Grant brothers, who started racing snowmobiles in the mid- to late 1990s when the Can-Am cross-
country circuit held a race in Thompson. Cory completed one other race this year, just after New Year’s in Pine Lake, Minnesota, but the I-500 was the only other USXC race he was planning to enter. “I used to do the whole circuit but I’m getting older, everybody knows, and now I actually have a contract with Ski-Doo where instead of racing I’m more of a tester,” Cory says. “I ride and test. They’ve got younger guys now that they have racing that I give information to and they seem to want that from me instead of risking breaking my neck, I suppose.” But while their bodies might not be capable of absorbing the punishment they used to – Cory counts sprained wrists, a broken
ankle and several concussions among his racing career injuries – the Grants had been hoping that their minds would help them cross the finish line in Willmar had the race not been cancelled. “We’ve learnt from all our mistakes in the past,” says Quenton. “I wish I knew as much as I do now and knew how to ride but had that 20-yearold body,” Cory said. “It’d be nice to have a 40-year-old brain when you’ve done it forever with a 20-year-old body. That’d be the answer.” The Grants would have been two of only a handful of Canadians in the I-500 in the pro or semi-pro classes. And Ski-Doo wasn’t the only one stepping forward to help them try to realize
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their dream. “People want you to do this kind of thing,” says Quenton. “Growing up in the north here, people are helping us out without even asking them. They’re supersupportive. It’s good to see. It’s a snowmobile town so it shows when you want to do something like this because it is very expensive to do and people recognize that.” “I don’t know if we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t get all the support but it sure does help and it makes you feel good, too,” says Cory. “You’ve got a town behind you.” This year, however, barring a last-minute miracle, competing in the old-style I-500 race will remain a dream.
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