WMA Steel City

Steel City hosted the last round of the '06 WMA Hitachi AMA/WMA National Motocross Championship, and was the place to settle the '06 championship. Coming into the race, there wasn't a lot of title drama, as Moto XXX / Honda of Houston's Jessica Patterson had a 23-point lead with two motos remaining.

The women had ridden in the mud at Binghamton in an extremely sloppy single-moto shootout, but this time around they not only had mud to deal with, but also the ruts and bumps laid down by the motos of the AMA pros. Their first moto ran during the intermission between the first and second motos, and the second moto ran at the end of the day, when the track was at its worst.

When the gate dropped for the first moto, Jessica Patterson had a good jump, though Leah Cantrell and Dutch racer Marianne Veenstra slipped by as they exited the first turn. Patterson eventually worked her way back into the lead, only to go down in an off-camber section. After some jockeying in the pack, Sarah Whitmore ended up with a bit lead. Jessica worked back to fourth at the end of the moto behind Kirsten Raemisch, Tara Gieger, and the winner, Sarah Whitmore. The fourth-place finish for Patterson was enough to wrap up the '06 number one plate, and give Jessica Patterson her third consecutive title.

Patterson came back to take the second moto, though not without a scare. She cased a jump hard on the last lap, tweaked her right wrist badly, but was able to nurse her Honda home to the finish. She was followed in by Whitmore and Veenstra. Alisa Nix was fourth, and and Gieger settled for fifth.

The top three in the overall for the day were Whitmore, Patterson and Gieger.


Click here for a gallery of photos from Sunday's action. 

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