CHERRY GROVE - About 30 racers who feel a need for speed headed to the Cherry Grove Rodeo Grounds with their customized lawn tractors on Aug. 20, to take part in the fifth annual Lawn Tractor Races.
"The thing I like about lawn tractor racing is that it's a very inexpensive hobby to get in to," said Aaron Pottelberg, the event's lead organizer and a director on the Cherry Grove Recreation & Agricultural Society board.
Cherry Grove's Lawn Tractor Races started in 2018 as a bunch of friends in the area modifying lawn tractors and getting together to race them. With a handful of mowers showing up, their friends and families started coming out to watch.
"By 2020, we had 18 mowers and 200 spectators to our event, and this past year we had nearly 30 mowers and 500 spectators," he said.
Competitors arrive from as close to home as Cherry Grove, Cold Lake and the wider Lakeland area, to as far as Lloydminster and even Calgary.
To keep up with the growing crowd, the last two years have see a growth in food and drink vendors which includes Cold Lake Brewing, The Forkinator and Lemonade by Izzy, with the recent addition of Joly's Fine Cuisine and Sweet Tooth.
Racers start your engines
The Cherry Grove race has three classes - Stock, Modified and Super Modified.
"Stock means you take the blades off of your mower (or the deck) and race your unit, Modified means you have removed governors and swapped pulleys around to get the mowers to go 35-50 km/h, Super Modified is everything else, from built up V-twins to snowmobile engine in lawn mowers," said Pottelberg.
"To get a mower in modified class, our most popular class, would cost you under $200 to buy some pulleys and a new belt. In fact most of our racers spend more money on paint and aesthetics than on the running gear, whether it be bright neon colours, NASCAR replicas or fully blacked out rigs."
In the end, racers compete to win a coveted Cherry Grove Lawn Tractor Blade Trophy, and a small prize donated from a local company in the area.
The trophy idea came from the Cherry Grove Car Show, 'Home of the Piston Trophy.'
"We wanted something similar so we invented the Lawn Tractor Blade trophy," said Pottelberg.
The race results
First Place Stock - Xavier Wilson
Second Place Stock - Janine Penney
Third Place Stock - Valerie Power
First Place Modified - Nathan Zacharias
Second Place Modified - Aaron Pottelberg
Third Place Modified - Dallen Jurick
First Place Super Modified - Chris Grant
Second Place Super Modified - Brian Kotowich
