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There are certainly many valid claims to the legitimacy of it, but two-times champion Ryan Villopoto picked up his fourth win of the 2013 championship with another commanding victory at St.Louis.
Anyone who might question whether a Supercross race is exciting enough would have been duly silenced after the events on Saturday. St Louis had it all: crashes, restarts, intense racing and a couple of suspicious acts of rule breaking...
First things first. After a nasty accident between Kyle Chisholm and Matt Goerke on lap 3 (see the first video), the race was restarted with a not-often-seen single file line. With James Stewart having led the race up until that point, he sat at the front of the queue. Ryan Villopoto (who already seemed to avoid a wrist slapping for jumping while a medical flag was out) sat back in 6th.
It wasnt a position he would stay in for long as both Villopoto and Chad Reed quickly work their way past Mike Alessi (who started in 3rd), to start chasing down Justin Barcia in 2nd. Villopoto then muscles Reed out of 3rd before the end of lap five.
By lap eight, everything started to kick off: Barcia was sat on Stewarts tail, with Villopoto hot on the heels of Barcia. By lap 10, RV had overtaken Barcia and was swapping the lead with Stewart multiple times over the next couple of laps. At one point, both Ryan Villopoto and Justin Barcia sit ahead of James Stewart but Barcia tags a tuff block on lap 13 which allows Stewart, Reed and - from out of nowhere - Ryan Dungey to get past, pushing Barcia back to 5th.
With five laps left to go, we are shown a replay of VIllopoto passing Stewart on a yellow flag but it seems that the race officials let the Monster Energy riders second infraction slide.
So, by the end of the race, RV takes a big chunk out of Millsaps points lead (Davi finished back in 6th) and Ryan Dungey sits as a quiet threat in 3rd. There are seven races still to go, but Villopoto is showing that he wont let anything get in his way on his mission for a third championship title.
ST LOUIS RESULTS
1st Ryan Villopoto
2nd James Stewart
3rd Chad Reed
4th Ryan Dungey
5th Justin Barcia
6th Davi Millsaps
7th Mike Alessi
8th Trey Canard
9th Justin Brayton
10th Andrew Short
2013 SUPERCROSS CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st David Millsaps 189
2nd Ryan Villopoto 177
3rd Ryan Dungey 166
4th Trey Canard 148
5th Chad Reed 147
6th Justin Barcia 132
7th James Stewart 122
8th Andrew Short 113
9th Justin Brayton 103
10th Broc Tickle 87
