NZ Insider No.14: Team New Zealand

Welcome to our brand new weekly web-exclusive column, Transmoto‘s NZ Insider. Penned each week by Kiwi, Chris Ritchie, the NZ Insider will present the story-behind-the-stories on NZ-related dirt bike happenings across the globe. 

Well folks, after all of that ‘will we or won’t we’ drama, New Zealand’s team for the 2014 Motocross of Nations, to be held in Latvia, has finally been announced by Motorcycling New Zealand. Top to bottom we have Hamish Dobbyn in MX1, Hamish Harwood in MX2, and Scott Columb in Open, with Scotty also taking on the captain’s role for the prestigious Chamberlain Trophy event.

For both Hamish’s, they will leave their trusty two-strokes behind, and jump onto KTM four-strokes, with Dobbyn stepping up to the 450, and Harwood the 250. As they still have to complete their respective MX Nationals campaigns in Pro Lites, they will be able to get some valuable seat time on the four-strokes from next week before making the lengthy trip across to Latvia a week prior to the MXoN event.

In Scott Columb’s case, he made the switch to the YZ450F after the NZ MX Nationals ended in April, and has been carving plenty of laps lately, so he is ready to step up for the MXoN.

Our Team Manager will be long-time Australasian MX identity, Dave Craig.

In other news, we are absolutely gutted for our boy, Levi Sherwood. He went down hard in his first qualifying run at the final round of the Red Bull X-Fighters held in front of the State Buildings in Pretoria, South Africa over the weekend. He came up just short on a Double-Grab Flip, with his front wheel slightly on an angle as he landed, causing the bike to high-side, and flip him off, landing heavily, and bouncing on his back.

Thankfully he was able to get up, and luckily suffered no broken bones in the crash, but was in a considerable amount of pain, forced to end his qualifying short, finishing in 12^th. In Sunday’s main event, the pain was too much to handle, and Levi chose to play it safe in his run by throwing a few whips for the 20,000 local fans, with the glory going to WA’s Josh Sheehan, claiming his maiden World Tour title for 2014. Sherwood had led the standings from the opening round, and while obviously disappointed not to have been able to clinch a second X-Fighters title, he was happy to leave South Africa with no serious injuries, and head home for some time off, and now focus on another crack next year.

Some of our nation’s best up-and-coming stars were in action over the weekend at the Pukekohe Club’s inaugural Secondary Schools Champs held at their famous Mercer sand track. The overall glory went to Hauraki Plains College, led by Ben Broad, national 15-16 year 125cc number two.

Other standouts in action were Josiah Natzke, recently returned from the World Junior Champs in Belgium, jumping on the KTM 250SX-F ahead of his full-time MX2 switch, winning the 14-16 year 250cc class convincingly, Wyatt Chase in the 13-15 year 125cc class, also only just having returned from supporting brother Cohen in Belgium, and Jayden Turnwald, also in the 13-15 year 125cc class, recently making the switch from Yamaha to KTM.