2017 ISDE: How to Sponsor the Aussies

Funding for national sporting teams is always an emotive issue. And it’s been a particularly hot topic for riders selected to represent Australian teams at the International Six Days Enduro (ISDE) in the wake of Motorcycling Australia’s late-2015 announcement that there’d be a marked reduction in ISDE funding from the Australian Sports Commission for 2016 – an announcement that came, ironically, just weeks after Australia created history by winning the World, Junior and Women’s Trophy teams titles at the 2015 ISDE in Slovakia.
A media release from MA late last week, however, suggests that the Aussie teams’ coffers will be bolstered for the 2017 ISDE in France. Great news, right? Well, yes. But the news was accompanied by a caveat.
“As a matter of courtesy,” read last week’s MA release, “Motorcycle Australia wishes to inform 2017 ISDE applicants that, whilst MA has significantly increased its funding for the ISDE from previous years, there is unfortunately still a substantial shortfall in overall funding required to cover the costs of all participants travelling to France.”
Translation: Australia’s four-rider World Trophy Team and three-rider Women’s World Trophy Team will both be fully funded in France in late August, but the three riders selected on our Junior World Trophy Team won’t. They’ll need to fund themselves. And that is why MA is “seeking expressions of interest for all types of sponsorship, including naming-right sponsorship, for the World Trophy Team, Women’s World Trophy Team and Junior World Trophy Team”.
Interested? Address your enquiries to MA’s Off-Road Event Coordinator, Matthew Falvo, via email: offroad@ma.org.au
Team rider applications for the 2017 ISDE have now closed, and MA intends to announce Australia’s finalised teams by late April.

2015 ISDE

Remember the euphoria that surrounded Australia’s historic trio of team wins at the 2015 ISDE in Slovakia? Check out Andy Wigan’s “Championships of the World” insight from late 2015.

1939 ISDE

Admittedly, being provisionally relegated to second place behind France, pending the outcome of an FIM legal hearing, was a bitter pill to swallow for Australia’s World Trophy team for some months after the 2015 ISDE. But spare a thought for the riders of the 1939 ISDE, which was disrupted by the Nazis’ invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War!