New Zealand ATV MOTO-X National Championship 2006 Amberiey, Canterbury October 20-21, 2006 By: Harold Goodman

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Unlike home, the seasons in New Zealand are the opposite, and it was spring time in the South Hemisphere, which was an added bonus. When we arrived at the Airport, Ian Ffitch and Cy Bettjeman were waiting for us to arrive. We wasted no time in getting to business, so we grabbed breakfast, dropped off our luggage, and headed to the track. The track was nestled in a beautiful rolling hill pasture (paddock in New Zealand), which was scarred by huge holes and jumps that were to make up the demo track that Doug Gust, Kory Ellis, and I were going to use to put on a show. It was a pretty good track that they built just for us, but it was a little sketchy the first time around because the jumps were built by digging small craters to provide the dirt for the jump take off and landing, so you definitely didn’t want to come up short and fall into what seemed to be a bottomless pit.

The main purpose of our trip down south was to provide a show and participate in the annual New Zealand National. Unlike in the USA, they don’t have a race series spread over six months, but instead, they race seven Motos over one weekend on only one track to determine the National Champion. Each year, a brand new track is built by the club hosting the event, and it is laid out and built only a few days before the national, so no one rider will have an advantage over anyone else for the championship.

The track wasn’t like anything you would find back home at the ATVA MX Nationals, it was primarily a grass track with only a few jumps, but there were a few natural terrain jumps, which provided some huge air. The one jump, we put a little lip on to make it a fourth gear wide open leap, which had a span of over ninety feet to the downhill landing. The track ended up being fairly technical, with elevation changes and off cambers, and the whole track got somewhat rough, but I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Before were able to do any riding, there was a lot of work involved just in building our race quads out of stock machines provided by a local dealership. I came prepared with as many racing components from my race quad as possible, so I could turn the stocker into something that I felt comfortable racing. Besides the normal, A-arms, swingarm, shocks, and nerfbars, I also brought along my entire Curtis Sparks top end and bolted it on for a significant boost in power from the stock Honda 450R. The conversation was a lot more difficult than expected because Kory, Doug, and I were both limited on time and accessibility to tools that we usually have available for the job. In the end, it all worked out and all three of us were happy with what we were riding.

During the time that we weren’t working on our quads, we got to see some of the beautiful New Zealand country side. Ian was our tour guide, and he did an awesome job of showing us around and keeping us entertained. He had everything lined up from rafting, jet boat rides, hot springs, and paintball, which was something that I haven’t done since college. The one thing that you couldn’t miss on our tour was the abundance of sheep because they were everywhere you looked and even in the town’s grazing in the people’s yards, but Somehow, I managed to be there for two weeks and not get a single picture of one sheep. Unfortunately for Doug, he missed out on most of the sight seeing and adventures because he arrived a week later than Kory and I.

After all the preparation, it was finally time for the national. People began arriving at the track on Friday, but there was no practice until Saturday morning. The locals were excited to see we arrived to compete in their national, so we signed plenty of autographs during our visit. The total turnout for the event was significantly lower than what we normally see at a national with only around 130 entries, but considering, the New Zealand population is less than that of Michigan; it was actually a descent turnout in retrospect. There were numerous classes for riders of different skill level to compete, which were similar to the ATVA MX Nationals.

Saturday morning practice began, which was quickly followed by the first of seven Motos to determine the national champion. Yes, I said “Seven Motos”. We did four Motos on Saturday followed by three Motos on Sunday, which is the minimum amount of Motos required to declare a national champion. For those daring to compete in multiple classes, it was extremely difficult because you were coming off the track only to stage for the next Moto.

Day One provided an almost perfect day for racing except for the fact it was really windy, which made it nearly impossible to launch one of the jumps during the Motos. The day started out with “Digger” Doug Gust winning the first two Motos, and I was able to squeeze out the third Moto win, but Doug was back out front for the final Moto of the day for his third win. I finished right behind him, and Kory Ellis finished all four Motos holding down third place.

Saturday night, the clouds rolled in and it rained all night long and into Sunday, which turned the track into a sloppy mess. What made it even more miserable was the fact that we didn’t even have any good way to clean up in-between Motos. Regardless of the weather, the show must go on, and in the fifth Moto, two locals finished in the first two spots, and I finished in third with Doug finishing way back around sixth place. In the sixth Moto, I was able to claim my second win of the weekend, which was enough to boost me into the points lead. In the final Moto, one of the top New Zealand riders, Quentin Palmer,, claimed the win, and I finished in second followed by Doug in third, which secured me the overall champions. Doug finished out the weekend in second overall with Quentin Palmer rounding out the Podium, which left Kory Ellis with a fourth overall finish. The only bad news was that if I would have made the pass on Quentin in the final Moto, Kory would have finished in the final podium position. Our host, Ian Ffitch rounded out the top five.

After finally getting cleaned up, we went to the awards banquet, which immediately followed the racing. The club hosting the race did an excellent running the entire event, which surely kept them busy. At the banquet, we signed many more autographs and had great fun with all our new Kiwi friends.