READ ONLINE...
Surprise! Simons Delivers, page 1
SNO-X Magazine Vol 6, No 2, Nov 2007
Story by Vince Castellanos, Images by Brian B and Jim U.

Surprise! Simons Delivers

In late 2005, Ryan Simons was in the best shape of his life. On the powerful Olah Racing squad, Simons had been in Minnesota for much of the ’05 fall preparing for the World PowerSports Association (WPSA) National season. He was coming off a solid ’04-’05 campaign that included a 6th overall in Pro Stock points and spirits were high. But Simons’ momentum came to an abrupt halt just before the season-opening Duluth National when visa issues forced the Canadian to leave the United States. The matter was quickly resolved, but the damage was done – Simons missed Duluth and never seemed to recover. “He just struggled to get anything going,” says friend and former Olah teammate Robbie Malinoski. “Every time something good happened, something bad would follow.” Simons’ season peaked with a strong 5th place finish at the Winter X Games, but the second half was filled with injuries and trouble. He did manage two podiums on the year but had another tossed when his sled failed a tech inspection. “Basically, my results sucked, I got hurt and it was a downward spiral,” Simons says. “By the end of the year, I was over it. I didn’t talk to [industry people] for months. I wasn’t even sure I was coming back.” But come back he did, and what a comeback it was.

The Man
Born in Alberta in 1982, Simons grew up in a snowmobiling family. Ryan received a Kitty Cat at age 4 and was riding his mom’s 1992 Arctic Cat Cougar by age 10. “That was the greatest thing since sliced bread,” he says. In addition to his sledding, Simons also took to dirtbikes, and he was soon a proficient motocross racer. Despite his Arctic Cat roots, Ryan got a job at a Polaris dealership, and the owner – who knew of Simons’ dirtbike success – convinced the 16-year-old to try snocross. Unfortunately, Ryan’s Polaris career ended before it began when an early-season snowboarding accident kept him from competing. “I think I rode that Polaris twice, and I never even got to race it,” Simons says. His next two years were spent racing Arctic Cats in Canada. “Ryan was the man back home,” says fellow Canadian Malinoski. “He was faster than all of us.” Soon Simons would be one of the fastest racers south of the border, too. At the end of a successful 2000-01 Canadian campaign, his first as a pro, Simons decided to travel to North Dakota to try his luck as a semi-pro at the Fargo Indoor. “We put my Mod in the back of a pick-up truck and came down with no idea of what to expect,” Simons recalls. “I knew Matt Judnick and a bunch of big names would be racing, but I didn’t know how I’d do.” He won. “I got the holeshot and took off,” he says. “I was super-surprised to get the start, and I was super-surprised no one passed me. Brian Sturgeon [then Cat’s race director] shook my hand and neither one of us knew who the other was – no one had a clue who I was.” Then Canadian Cat Coordinator Jamie Anseeuw did. “Ryan was on my sponsored rider program,” Anseeuw says. “I was impressed when he just showed up at Fargo; he was fast.” On the strength of that performance, Simons earned a 2001-02 ride out of Goodwin Performance, where Ryan did most of his own wrenching. Simons spent the season killing the Indoor tour – he won Semi-Pro Stock points and placed second in S.P. Open. The National series? Well, that was another story. “I crashed a lot,” Simons says with a laugh. “I didn’t even make many finals. That was Robbie’s first National series year, too, and we supplied a lot of action; one of us was always crashing.” In fact, Simons’ first few National seasons featured frequent offs. “Well, we were young and going for it,” says Malinoski. “We ended up landing on our head a lot.” “People loved to watch me, and not because I was good, but because I had some huge crashes,” Simons admits. “I was riding above my head and did a lot of dumb stuff. I just pinned it and whatever happened, happened. My brain would shut off and I’d go flying.” By 2004-05, though, Simons had become more consistent. “He had a lot of good wrecks, but he was always a squirrelly guy who crashed a lot, even on dirtbikes,” says close friend Aaron Christensen, who has known Simons since the mid-1990s. “He smashed his brains out, but he finally learned that it hurt. He figured it out.” But just when Simons was figuring it out, the bitter taste of the ‘05/’06 season nearly ended it.