Raw States
World Championship Snowmobile Derby
Eagle River, WI · Sports
- When
- January 14–17, 2027
- Where
- World Championship Derby Complex · Eagle River · WI
- Cost
- Not confirmed
- Status
- Confirmed from the organizer's published schedule
Eagle River's half-mile banked oval track has hosted the World Championship Snowmobile Derby since 1964, when local innkeepers and the Lions Club started the race that ABC's Wide World of Sports later broadcast nationally. Racers and fans travel from across the country each January for the sport's oldest championship. (2027 dates approximate.)
The history within reach
- World Championship Snowmobile Derbysame spot
Eagle River's half-mile banked oval track has hosted the World Championship Snowmobile Derby since 1964, when local innkeepers and the Lions Club started the race that ABC's Wide World of Sports later broadcast nationally.
Eagle River has run the World Championship Snowmobile Derby on its banked ice oval since 1964, the Daytona of a sport invented two towns over, and calls itself the snowmobile capital of the world with several hundred miles of groomed trail to back it.
Carl Eliason, whose flat feet kept him off snowshoes, bolted a Johnson outboard motor to a toboggan with skis in the Sayner general store in 1924 and patented the motor toboggan in 1927, the machine every snowmobile descends from.
A multi-day country music camping festival named for Rhinelander's mythical hodag creature, running since the 1980s.
A hot-air balloon rally on the Hodag Country Festival grounds that benefits veterans' causes, featuring mass balloon launches and evening balloon glows.