An Off Road Insight With AJ Roberts

AJ Roberts

The rain does it again – so much for Queensland being the sunshine State. After weeks of wet weather, rounds 9 & 10 of the Australian Off Road Championships have been cancelled.

This years running of the Hattah Desert Race resulted in injury and misadventure for some of the top riders.
Factory KTM rider, Chris Hollis hasn’t been having much luck with his desert campaign. Chris was forced to bow out early, finishing the event early on the first lap after being a slam from behind caused by Warren Smart. The impact of the crash was enough to break Chris’ bars in half, leaving significant damage to his thumb.

Daniel Milner also had a day to forget. A flat tyre in qualifying due to a broken spoke, meant that Daniel commenced the race back in the pack in around 60th position. He managed to charge hard and made his way well into the top 20 outright before again running into trouble, colliding with a tree leaving him seeing stars and out of the competition.

Going into the event with a shoulder injury sustained just days leading up to the Finke Desert race, Jarrod Bewley was determined to give Hattah a chance and qualified extremely well in 2nd position, a mere 4 seconds behind race leader KTM’s Toby Price, but was unable to continue and was forced out in the 5th lap with too much pain.
Chances are we won’t be seeing Jarrod at the next rounds of the AORC, the injury likely to require surgery to repair a possibly blown AC joint. Jarrod will consult with specialists in Brisbane, before determining the outcome for the rest of the season.

The biggest surprise at Hattah was seeing Peter Boyle again. Not only did we see him race the MX Nationals two weeks prior to Hattah, in his casual approach he qualified 6th and was off to a great start battling with myself and Warren Smart.
Peter finished the event in a solid 5th outright, leading the way for Honda, which left everyone wondering where the GHR team was as Jacob and Todd Smith rocked up on their own to the event. Both the Smith boys had a good dig but unfortunately ran out of fuel and failed to finish the event.

With a sudden change in the Off Road calendar, this gives everyone some time to get things back on track, so lets just see who rocks up to the line in August for the South Australian round of the AORC.