Kanab team takes Grand Prize at the national Red Bull Soap Box Race in Salt Lake City

The Desert Rats - as the team of Matt Henke, Tom Avant, Doug Thebeau, Jordan Kelley and Richard Bartlett called them­selves - claimed the Grand Prize at the Redbull Soap Box Race in Salt Lake City on Saturday. Out of hun­dreds of applicants, only fifty were selected to compete in the race, and of those fifty, the judges awarded the grand prize to the Rats on a basis of in­genuity, efficiency and - naturally, for a race designed to be “wacky” according to Red Bull - the entertainment value.

The Desert Rats. Photos courtesy of Matt Henke.

While the Rats com­pleted the race with the fourth fastest time overall, the judges praised the team’s cos­tuming, performances in the pre-race skit show and, above all, the effort and creativ­ity that went into the engineering of the massive rattlesnake design of their win­ning cart “Fievel Gone West;” complete with an articulated head that would turn with the handlebars and a working, two-foot long rattle that would sway as the wheels turned. Redbull’s pub­lic release on the event stated, “Team Desert Rats and Fievel Gone West built an engineer­ing masterpiece that wowed the judges and survived the course.” The team didn’t know until the very end of the competition that they’d been given per­fect scores across the board.

Henke reports learn­ing and reviewing the course, “The hours be­fore the race there was lots of public and media interaction. On the day of, we had our safety check, the logistics and line up, things… I went over it multiple times before we showed up on race day. I had walked the course multiple times the day before, I was feeling really confident.”

According to Avant, “What put us over the edge was the ingenu­ity of our design - there were a few teams that were faster than us, finished the race quicker, but they didn’t place over us because the judges looked at the creativity of the design. We didn’t just build a square that was weighted for speed.”

Said Henke, “They estimated twenty thousand people show­ing up; they had double that. I think they were as surprised as we are at Utah’s participa­tion, people came out in droves, it had such high energy. Working with the Redbull crew was great … they ate it up, they were as excited as we were.” The race in Salt Lake was attended by 50,000 plus attendees in per­son, with thousands more attending via live stream, with in-person witnesses stat­ing, “Main Street, from Temple Square all the way up to the capitol, was wall to wall people along the sides of the course.”

When asked ‘Would you do it again?’ Henke responded, “I would do it again, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Those memories of competing in a globally recognized event, the friendships I made, that was top-tier enjoyment, not just for me but for the people I was able to bring with me and the people who were spec­tators. The idea that I could do something on a whim and bring so many people along … everybody can look back and smile.”

While Henke reiter­ated, “None of us were there for the prizes, we were there to compete,” the team will never­theless be rewarded with an all-expenses paid trip to Austin, Texas, with VIP tick­ets to Redbull’s Cir­cuit of America Moto GP event. The sec­ond place team was awarded tickets to the Redbull Rampage in Springdale in October.

The Rats hope to fea­ture the winning cart in this year’s Fourth of July parade in Kanab. They are also likely to be featured in Discov­ery’s upcoming docu­mentary on the history of the Redbull Soap Box tradition, having been interviewed mul­tiple times by Discov­ery’s team and being featured in Redbull’s media content as well.

Images, race recaps and further event in­formation can be found on Red Bull and the Red Bull Soap Box Race’s respective home pages.