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Now, on his final professional race day, Short was right where you’d ex- pect him to be. He qualified 12th out of practice. Having had such good starts in previous weeks, it came as a surprise in moto one as Short got out of the gate a little worse than
he or his fans had hoped. Luckily, the highly-respected #29 was able to push his KTM into 11th within the first five minutes
of the race. Seeming to know it was his last race, Andrew wasn’t fully concerned with the best result possible and appeared to settle into a comfortable pace where he would
still have the chance to reminisce during his second to last moto. It being the first 450 moto and second moto of the day, the track was absolutely perfect, and the #29 was
on cloud nine with the luscious, drying dirt
of his final venue. As the race continued to the halfway point, Shorty had dropped a few spots to 13th but was running strong in a rather uneventful fashion. Soaking in the sun, peeking at the sidelines to secure every inch of the race in his long-term memory bank, there was a slight tango of respect between Shorty and the Ironman circuit. The respect began to strengthen and with only three laps to go, Short, surprisingly, pushed to the back wheel of Benoit in 12th but settled for 13th. By now, the reality was beginning to set in, replenishing himself in the rig, Shorty had one more race on the horizon, a finale to a memorable career.
As if part of his last showing, another exam- ple of his grit in overcoming inconveniences, the BTO KTM team was forced to complete a starting line rear-shock swap on Andrew’s bike in the minutes leading up to the gate drop; a race that would be his 165th moto start. Coming in clutch, the team finished the install and doing the unthinkable, while the entire pack approached the thin line of white powder marking the holeshot, it was the #29 of Andrew Short to gently place the cherry on top of his final moto. It ended up being the only item in his final moto, though, as Shorty was quickly shuffled back outside the top five where he disappeared on lap one.
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