.jpg "Cadarette Racing Celebrates Soo 500 Win for Arctic Cat")
Press Release –
TEAM ARCTIC WINS FIRST-EVER SOO 500 ENDURO
Cadarette Racing’s Troy Dewald and Jeff Leuenberger Overcome the Soo Hex
Thief River Falls, Minn. (Feb. 9, 2010) – It took a racer with a broken collarbone to finally knock the monkey off Team Arctic’s back at the Soo International 500 enduro in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.
Piloting a 2010 Arctic Cat Sno Pro 600 while nursing a broken collarbone, Troy Dewald and his Cadarette Racing teammate Jeff Leuenberger broke the 42-year hex to finally put Arctic Cat atop the world’s most prestigious snowmobile enduro race.
“The Arctic Cat family of dealers, racers and race fans extends a huge high-five to Dewald, Leuenberger and the whole Cadarette racing team,” said Mike Kloety, Team Arctic Race Manager. “Aided by the never-say-die attitude of team owner Greg Cadarette, these two amazing racers overcame incredible adversity to win. The pride we feel toward them is immense.”
The greatest adversity wasn’t history, rather it was the crash sustained on Thursday while testing for the race. The result: Dewald’s broken right scapula and a seriously tweaked race sled just two days before the Soo 500, which put into doubt their ability to race let alone win for the second-consecutive year.
“The pain was terrible and that made this win extra special,” said Dewald, who started from the pole position and raced an estimated 200 of the 500 laps. ““We came close to scrapping the program. To come back after that big crash makes this feel great.”
“The sled was all bent and the crew worked feverishly on it,” said Leuenberger. “Troy just said he would tough it out. I can’t believe he was able to ride as much as he rode.”
Arctic Cat suddenly cares about The Soo? Ha, preposterous. Five more times and you will have equaled Corey Davidson’s record six Soo titles. Good luck, good ol’ boys.
They probably cared. Just never won. Cat has won some pretty big races this year starting with the I500, then the Soo. Now hopefully Iron Dog and Cains Quest.
I wouldn’t say the jinx is over, I’m a crew member on the Cadarette Collision team, and spent the whole week up there. The jinx tried hard to get us all week and right up to the checkered flag, but we refused to give up. Troy crashed in practice and besides breaking his bone, he had the worst, deepest purple bruise I’ve ever seen, that went from his elbow to his shoulder, and down his back, across his butt, and ended on his thigh. Troy is a freak of nature, how he rode that sled that hard for that long is beyond me, but he said he could start the race, and make a run later in the race to give Jeff a break, and he did a hell of a job, how bad he was hurt makes it that much more incredible. During the race the snow dust was very thick and visibility was about 20 feet, when Jeff was exiting turn 4, a sled appeared out of the dust on its side in front of him and he had to flip his sled on it’s side and throw it away. He took on some bad bruising and broke his left thumb, and the sled had a broken brake lever and got bent back worse then after Troy crashed it, the a-arms were bent and the steering tie rod was pushed back and just barely touching the swaybar end link. Another 1/8″ and we would have lost alot of laps in the pits trying to fix it, luckily the brake lever was a quick fix and the master cylinder didn’t take on any damage. Near the end of the race, Jeff had to battle with one of the fastest sleds on the track the whole day, the #14 yamaha driven by two great friends and competitors, Chad Dyrdahl and Ross Erdman. Chad’s carbides were wore out like ours, but the bent ta hell, yet incredibly strong snopro 600 under Jeff was lighter and he found a way to cut thru the ice berms just right that would allow the sled to get loose so he could get it around the corner fast. A couple caution flags in the last 25 laps made it very interesting, but Jeff’s one of the best and drove that twisted metal to the checkered. Both Jeff and Troy are amazing drivers. Jeff never raced a cross country, but took a bone stock 05 REV X 600 sdi to the USCC munising race in 05 and took 4th in pro 600 and won the 40+ class, never oval sprint raced but won semi-pro stock in eagle river in 09, has won 5 MIRA pro 600 enduro championships the past 7 years, and been a key driver on the sled that has won the Soo 500 the past two years. Troy has won 6 or 7 MIRA pro 600 enduro championships, set the fastest qualifying time and sat on the pole at the S00 7 times, went to eagle river in 08 for the first time, qualified 2nd fastest in pro-stock, then never lost a race the whole weekend, and has been the other key driver that has won the Soo the past two years, both times from the pole.
This was the third Soo 500 win for Cadarette Collision, the first on a polaris, last year on a ski-doo, and of course this year on the cat. I can’t wait to be up there again next year with Jeff, Troy, Greg, and the rest of our awesome team and see if we can 3-peat, and win two in a row on a cat
Thanks to Greg Cadarette for assembling such a great team and sled, it was awesome to be a part of such a historic event.
Thanks to: Woodys, Camoplast, Cadarette Collision, Saginaw pattern & machine, Marshall distributing, The winning edge magazine, Arctic Cat, Wayne, John and Matt Hoos for all the time they spent with Greg helping to build that great sled
Aaron…awesome report! Thanks for sharing that. I think “the hex is broken” statement is true. Because thanks to you guys and the incredible effort by Troy/Jeff, an Arctic Cat has finally won this race. For a company that’s scored multiple wins in all the other “monuments” of snowmobile racing, NOT winning the Soo has been a sore spot. Who knows… it could be another 42 years before another Arctic Cat takes the win. But at least it’s finally happened ONCE. If you are a Minnesota Vikings fan, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. LOL. Congrats to Cadarette Racing!
Speed chan nel had a camera crew there and took vids off the team doing various things like studding, clutching, jetting, etc, etc.. They mounted on board cameras on two sleds and took up close video, that was awesome, and took video of the race and our pitstops. Look for a half hour episode on speed channel sometime in may probably
Doubt Gdad has anything agansit vampires. He probably knew the story about Marnie because Jesus Lafayette told him. The person who posessed Lafayette was Tio Luca. Tio means uncle, so I’m guessing that was Jesus’ uncle. If you watch that true blood trailer from comic con, Jesus tells Lafayette that only Laf and Marnie are true mediums. So gdad was demonstrating that Lafayette is capable of channeling a healing spirit just as Marnie is channeling a destructive one. Gdad might be a good guy!
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