Vintage racers get Olympus going

By TOM LAVENTURE

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Ironwood — The race must go on might have been the motto among dozens of enthusiastic vintage snowmobile racers eager to get the first competition of the year under their belt.

The temperatures were slightly above freezing, making the precipitation coming down a freezing drizzle rather than light snow for the Pro Vintage Race of the Ironwood Snowmobile Olympus on Saturday. The ice was groomed between every few races to keep the surface as good as could be expected.

Bruce Kassens, race director for Pro Vintage Racing, said it was beautiful weather for spectators with 33 degree temperatures. A little colder weather would have helped to lay more ice on the track but the track held up “really well” and the event finished on schedule, he said.

“This is an awesome facility for snowmobile racing,” Kassens said. “As beautiful as it is out today it would be great to have more fans. A lot of people think vintage is a bunch of old snowmobiles putzing around the racetrack and this is far from that. The 44 Super Mods are hitting close to 100 mph on this racetrack.”

Ironwood is the first racing event of the 25th year of Pro Vintage Racing since it started at the 1995 World Championship Snowmobile Derby in Eagle River, Wisconsin, Kassens said.

“We got so big with so many entries that they gave us our own weekend and it’s been flourishing ever since,” he said.

On Saturday in Ironwood there were 39 classes of stock and modified racing of vintage snowmobiles with added money from sponsors for the premier classes as an incentive, he said. There were also special races, he said.

Paul Diefenthaler of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, rode a Polaris RXL 440 to first place in the Super Mod 440 F/A class. It’s one of the featured races for the vintage machines.

Diefenthaler said the competition is great and it’s also a fun group of riders to hang out with.

“It was a bunch of stout guys out there and I came out on top,” he said.

With all the weather and snow this winter Diefenthaler said he didn’t have a chance to test his machines yet and that Ironwood was his first time out. He said it could have been cooler, ideally, to help the ice stand up longer.

“Ironwood’s great and we enjoy coming here,” he said. “This is an awesome facility and we usually go out on the town afterwards.”

Diefenthaler said he was brought up on the vintage machines. As a boy he learned to ride on his father’s old Polaris TX machines and now he modifies the motors and builds a racing chassis for them.

“I was at that age and I just stuck with it,” he said. “The new stuff is fine but I like the vintage stuff.”

The vintage machines are part of the Diefenthaler family. His daughter, Brooke, is a junior racer and will be in the women’s class next year with other women riders such as Becky Stull, Kaitlyn Stull and Deb Priebe.

Colton Niewolny, of Medford, Wisconsin, rode his Polaris Indy 500 and Polaris RXL 440 to first, second and third place finishes in Formula 500 and SuperMod 440 races.

“We’ve had quite a bit of success in the past five years,” Niewolny said. “I’m pretty young but we’ve jumped into a lot of the bigger classes already and have had a lot of success.”

Niewolny said he likes the older machines for the nostalgia they bring from the legends who rode them during the golden age of snowmobile racing in the 1970s.

“It’s kind of cool to ride something that they would have raced back then,” Niewolny said. “The new stuff is a little more forgiving with much better suspensions but they are both a lot of fun.”

The races averaged three or four competitors with a few races having more or fewer riders. It was not unusual to see a rider pull over for a problem with the machine.

There is natural pressure from the other riders to keep the equipment in top shape, Niewolny said. The competition is also about keeping the old sleds operating because they’ve been modified to run harder than the recreational use they were designed for years ago.

“It’s all about preparation and keeping in shape,” Niewolny said about the machines and the riders.

This was also Niewolny’s first racing event of the year. He hasn’t even been out to practice yet and this race was good preparation for the championships in Eagle River, and perhaps next week in Ironwood on the newer formula 500 machines.

The complete results of the 39 class categories will be posted within a few days at provintageracing.com.

When there were breaks in the action for the ice to be groomed the riders and spectators headed over to the heated multipurpose building for food, drinks and warm restrooms.

This was the first year for Danielle Kettunen as the food vendor. She learned through the organizers that the previous vendor wouldn’t be here this year and she stepped up and got the kitchen to pass the inspection.

Kettunen has 20 years of restaurant experience and brought some co-workers from her regular job with her to work the event. The crowds came in waves between the events and at the end when all the riders came in to attend the awards ceremony, she said.

She ran out of burgers and hotdogs right toward the end of the event which was fine because it helped push her homemade items.

“The Sloppy Joe recipe was actually my great-grandma’s recipe,” Kettunen said. “We used that because we wanted to make sure we had good food for the racers today.”

The Pro Vintage Race will be held Jan. 4-5, 2020 at the Gogebic County Fairgrounds racetrack, 648 West Cloverland Drive. The United States Snowmobile Association sanctioned race will attract some of the country’s most elite ice oval drivers.

Kettunen said she’s already planning ahead for the USSA event this weekend with bigger crowds expected.

“You can never have too much food when you’re feeding hungry racers and the colder it gets outside the better,” she said.