Sep. 20—NEW ULM — The shirtless, muscular man excitedly drove a red motorbike after his daughter, weaving in and out of parked cars and motorcycles until he reached their camp and dismounted.
He was racing 16-year-old Maci Lund, who had just earned second place in the last opening heat of flat track races Sunday afternoon at the Flying Dutchmen Cycle Club’s racing track in New Ulm.
Lund, a teenager from Lennox, South Dakota, had already won first place three times by that point.
Twice she beat groups of a half dozen boy racers, and once she outperformed a 32-year-old woman.
“That’s just how it’s always been,” said Maci’s father, Justis Lund. “I’ve always just thrown her in with everybody else and seen what she could do.”
What does Maci, who’s been riding since she was 5 years old and races 15-20 times a year, like most about flat track racing? “Mmm — probably just how competitive it is,” she said. Another perk is her high school peers think motorcycles are cool and often want to know more about her racing.
Hundreds of racers and their family members came from South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa and across Minnesota to convene at the Flying Dutchmen Cycle Club’s biannual weekend of racing. Ninety-degree heat and 25 mph wind gusts couldn’t suppress the roar of the motorcycles on Sunday.
At the starting line, racers rev their engines in preparation for the signal to go, a crescendo of noise that bursts as the dust rises from the spinning tires. Within a couple of minutes each race is over, and a new group of riders lines up.
The oval racing track is a third of a mile long, and the fastest riders exceed 80 mph, longtime Flying Dutchmen member Adam Schmidt said. A defining action of flat track is the sharp turn on each end of the oval.
Wearing a steel-soled left boot, a thick leather suit and padded undergarments, riders drag their left foot on the ground as their bike drifts around the ends of the track. The bikes are halfway to horizontal, often wobbling as riders shift their weight and fight gravity to stay on two wheels. They aim to slow down as little as possible while maintaining their balance.
“All that black stuff is rubber from the tires,” Schmidt said while looking over the track.
In the mid-1990s the club began hosting races at the Brown County Fairgrounds. In 2002 it built a track a half mile off Highway 68, just southeast of downtown New Ulm. The track sits in an open field surrounded by wooded hills.
Dirt bike racing is a generational affair, with children and parents and grandparents all riding or having ridden before. Schmidt, who lives in North Mankato, raced on Sunday but also watched his 13-year-old son, Jacob, ride. His daughter also races.
“You never have to worry about winning,” Schmidt said he tells his kids. “You just have to worry about having the most fun and being a good competitor for your friends. You don’t wanna run over your friends in the race, you know what I mean … you’re racing for a plastic trophy.”
Though Schmidt has been riding for decades, he said relatively new riders show up at New Ulm and can soon get up to speed. Proving his point was 32-year-old Jillian Deschenes, who had beat him out for first place just a few moments before.
The full-time nurse from Rogers began flat track riding only four years ago, a year after her fiancé, Eric Moldenhauer, competed in his first race.
“I started dating Eric and he was racing, and I went to one and was like, ‘I wanna try that.’ I saw another girl out there in the beginner class. And then he got me a dirt bike for Valentine’s Day that year,” she said.
She was hooked. Soon she got a bigger bike and sought bigger opportunities in the male-dominated sport. Now she’s sponsored by Royal Enfield, a multinational motorcycle manufacturer based in India.
On Sunday she “kicked our asses,” Moldenhauer said of himself and Schmidt. The two men were lined up with Deschenes until turn three, when they hit a rut and she zoomed by them.
“Everyone from the get-go has been super welcoming, and everyone’s a good sport. I just beat my fiancé and he’s excited for me,” Deschenes said. Moldenhauer said he is happy for her. She has a natural ability.
“It’s still fun to pass you, though,” she added, looking at Moldenhauer with a smirk.
The track near New Ulm is prominent and beloved among flat track racers, Deschenes and other riders said.
“It’s the atmosphere. It’s like — we call it the Flat Track Family,” she said. “It’s the best track in Minnesota, the best crew, the best club. It’s just a favorite track, I think, for everyone in our district.”
The sport is growing with the help of children joining at a younger age and an increasing number of girls who want to ride. Deschenes said it has become more common to see girls racing.
Maci Lund, narrowly beat Deschenes in a group of five female riders.
“I got kinda nervous, I thought she might get me,” Maci said of Deschenes, who was at her hip on the second-to-last lap.
A hurdle to joining the sport is the cost of safety equipment, which are needed because the flat track can be dangerous. Riders are protected by only a leather suit, a helmet and some padding as they hurl their bikes around sharp turns.
“It’s like falling down on sandpaper,” Schmidt said, gesturing to the ripped fabric on the pant leg of his racing suit. “Very abrasive when you fall down. The leathers are the only way you can keep yourself from getting tore up.”
Jake Rehberger, a full-time firefighter in Richfield, started the nonprofit Jacks of Spade to provide safety gear for kids and grow the sport of flat track.
Each set of gear costs around $2,000, and children outgrow the $1,000 suits in a year, he said. He and his late brother, Zach, had to give up flat track racing as children because their parents couldn’t afford the expense.
By building an inventory of gear for interested children, he hopes to weaken that barrier to entry. The initial group of riders his nonprofit is sponsoring contains two girls and two boys.
Only one rider fell in the first two hours of racing on Sunday. The rider’s bike hit the pavement while he was turning into the homestretch, a precarious maneuver responsible for many falls, race commentator Thomas Schreyer said.
Wearing a blue headset, Schreyer stood in a watch tower as riders made laps. He recounted the time he fell while riding — or what he has been told of it.
He remembers barely anything from that day, except finishing a prior race in second place and feeling like he could have won.
The 51-year-old New Ulm man fell on a turn at this very track six years ago.
He was hospitalized and suffered a traumatic brain injury. He still deals with memory loss.
A year later, Schreyer took first place during a race, the first time he had ever done so. Many people felt uneasy to see him back on the track, he said, especially because of how he ended that first place outing.
He ended up crashing in the same corner of the track where his accident occurred a year prior.
The second time he did it consciously, however, laying down the bike after accelerating to secure first place. He had too much speed and wouldn’t have been able to make the turn. The crash knocked the wind out of him, but he wasn’t otherwise injured.
“It scared a lot of people,” Schreyer said. “What I really should have done is just let off the throttle and took second place … But I didn’t.”
He knew he could win. He was just having fun out there, he said. It’s part of racing motorcycles.
“Everything goes out of your brain except for riding,” he said. “If you’re thinking of other stuff, you’re going too slow.”