Mark Kariya | June 11, 2018
2018 Last Dog Standing Results–Due to a lingering wrist injury, the Prairie Dogs Motorcycle Club’s 8th Annual Last Dog Standing (LDS), Presented by AOMC, was only Kyle Redmond’s second race this year, but he got a top-three start in the Last Dog 3 (LD3) heat, eventually passed for the lead and rode to an uncontested win over SRT Husqvarna teammate Trystan Hart and FMF KTM Factory Off-road Racing Team’s Taylor Robert. It marked Redmond’s first LDS win since the inaugural race in 2011, giving him a majority of the $10,000 purse.
Kyle Redmond Wins 2018 Last Dog Standing
The final Pro results were determined by moto scores in LD2 and LD3 (LD1 being only for Sportsmen) and, coincidentally, all three top finishers had identical scores—3-1 for Redmond, 2-2 for Hart and 1-3 for Robert—with the last moto the tie-breaker, of course. Only the Pros rode the prologue, which determined their start order for LD2, and only Sportsmen tackled LD1, which was essentially the course from the previous night’s team race. From there, though, the Prairie Dogs threw in more and more technical trail, with LD3 proving to be so tough that Sherco-mounted Mitch Carvolth was the only rider besides the top three to complete LD3’s two laps of a grueling loop approximately eight miles long at Glen Helen Raceway Park.
For Kenda/Fasst Co./O’Neal Racing TX 300-mounted Redmond, the race was decided early in LD3 when he got the lead and was able to make a break from Hart and Robert whom he’d been dicing with: “We were all together just kind of pushing our bikes and getting roosted by each other. I was like, ‘I’ve got to get out of here!’ So I found a good line at the top of one of [the climbs]; Trystan was pushing his bike and I slipped around him and never saw him again.
“It was tricky. The race was tough,” he declared. “The first lap [of LD3] was really hard and the second lap was quite a bit easier.
“I can’t say I was ready [for this race], but it worked out so I’m happy.”
As for teammate Hart in his LDS debut aboard his Motul/Shorai/Shoei-backed TX 300, the young Canadian said, “The real game-changer was over here; there was some deep sand hills. Us three got absolutely screwed because we were the first ones there and the dirt wasn’t turned up so we were turning it up and it was like two feet deep, I swear!
“Kyle was in front so we let him go. Taylor and I just chilled out and got off our bikes because it was so dusty! At that point, we were so hot we just decided to help each other and we wasted a lot of energy doing that because you’re doing double the bikes, basically. We were just fried and we just coasted, basically, in on that [first] lap, then I got a little boost of energy, I would say, and I charged that second lap.”
Robert revealed, “I had my work cut out for me right away [in LD3],” after getting his Red Bull/Motorex/Troy Lee Designs 300 TPI XC-W (an early production 2019) stuck in a chain link fence after one climb, dropping from first to third.
“I caught back up to those guys in some of the really hard canyons back there, but I just exhausted all my energy. I didn’t have much for them. Kyle got up a hill that Trystan and I had to help each other up and he was gone—he was riding really good. Trystan and I got to the top and we were smoked; we just went into full survival mode.”
After his sixth in LD2, Liqui Moly/TBT Racing/Klim 300 SE-R rider Carvolth was the final official finisher in LD3. Gas Gas-mounted Noah Kepple was credited with fifth place after reaching check four on the second lap of LD3 with SRT Husqvarna’s Wally Palmer sixth in his first LDS (and first time at Glen Helen). Josh Rooken-Smith, Spenser Wilton, Ryan Wells and Ryan Gouveia rounded out the top 10.
2018 Last Dog Standing Results
- Kyle Redmond
- Trystan Hart
- Taylor Robert
- Mitch Carvolth
- Noah Kepple
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