By day ORC's Kevin Gorzny is a mild mannered kind of guy, content to sit in front of a pair of 19 inch monitors and develop the look and feel of the Off-road.com web site...... But there's another side of Kevin we rarely see. The side whose hands are at home on a pair of handlebars as they are on a keyboard. You see, Kevin also races dirt bikes. and not surprisingly, he's pretty damn good at it.

Not too long ago, Gorzny made his way to Las Vegas from Illinois, where he'd studied Multimedia design. We dragged him off on a trip to cover the 2000 San Felipe 250, warped his mind with Mexican Beer and fish tacos, and the rest as they say, was history. Although we knew he was a good rider, all of Gorzny's experience had been on the Moto / Supercross tracks of the Midwest. He was a relative virgin to desert terrain.

Apparently, it didn't take him very long to adapt.... Gorzny threw a leg over the bosses Husaberg 600 and vanished into the horizon. As the 2000 drew nearer, Kevin had spent considerable time aboard his own KTM 250 EX/C in the deserts surrounding Las Vegas, and had even taken home a couple high finishes in some of the local events' Expert classes. Sure, he still prefers the MX tracks, but what the heck. When in Rome... (or Vegas).

One day, the illustrious, and reasonably well lit offices received a call from Mike Childress, of Checkers Off-Road Racing fame looking for a rider in the Baja 2000. It seemed they had an opening, and were running out of time. Oddly enough, we just happened to know a guy.... Along with Childress, Gorzny will be teaming up with Scott Birch, Matt Anderson, and Malcolm Bryce aboard their Honda XR650 in pursuit of the Sportsman title. The battle plan?

Survival.

At this time, the team estimates a 50 hour run down the peninsula, meaning that there will be 2 full nights on the race course. And of course, Kevin drew at least one of them.

"I haven't had a lot of experience racing at night" said Gorzny, "But I'm taking the advice of those who have."

The team plans on making the most of their time during the daylight hours, and going into survival mode for the night legs of the race. Despite being a "new" team - not having ridden together before - they share a lot in common with the other teams in the sportsman class. Namely, most of their competition consists of new teams as well, putting everyone back to nearly equal footing.

In the end, Kevin thinks victory will come down to consistency, rather than just pure speed. After all, 50 hours is a lot of time for something to go wrong. Broken parts, the occasional stray cow, even the notorious booby-traps of the peninsula can quickly extract their toll, and end the race for even the best of teams.

Said Gorzny, "Yea, I'm a little nervous. Who wouldn't be? But as long as we keep our heads screwed on straight and don't take any unnecessary risks, we should do pretty good. We've got a pretty good team, probably one of the fastest in the class, but will we win? A lot can happen out there. Our goal is to be around at the finish line.

The old adage applies yet again - "You can't finish first if you don't first finish."

Be sure to stay tuned to Off-Road.com's coverage of the SCORE/Tecate Baja 2000 for continual updates, and race reports from the Baja peninsula.