NZ Insider No.46: Desert Storm

Transmoto’s weekly web-exclusive column, the NZ Insider, penned by Chris Ritchie.

One of the most popular trail rides on the NZ calendar is the annual Desert Storm, taking place over this coming weekend, May 9-10, near the Desert Road, with over 1000 riders gathering beneath the picturesque setting of Mt Ruapehu in the central North Island. There are over 130km of trails on offer for 2015, with some new trails added for this year’s event as well as the old favourites, and even some Endurocross racing, as well as free camping and hot showers available. Anyone with a dirt bike in the lower North Island would be silly not to get amongst it!

Current Motorcycling New Zealand licence holders have less than a week remaining to vote for their preferred Presidential candidate by May 12, with both Paul Stewart and Glen Williams vying for the position to lead the governing body of motorcycling in New Zealand for a two-year period. The winning candidate will then be announced at the upcoming annual MNZ conference to be held in Queenstown over the weekend of May 23-24. Traditionally, only a handful of votes decide the outcome, so if you are eligible to vote, get it done!

It was an off-weekend for many of our riders including the Kiwi contingent currently contesting the Australian MX Nationals, as well as Josiah Natzke in the EMX125 European Championship. Natzke continued his preparation for this coming weekend’s third round at Talavera in Spain from his base in Belgium and hopes to improve his fourth place ranking in the series. We expect to see better results from the KTM Factory Junior Team star at the next few rounds as the tracks are more to his liking and he becomes more familiar with his European experience.

Finally, our star woman MXer, Courtney Duncan, was slated to compete in the World Women’s Championship class in conjunction with the MXGP series rounds at Matterley Basin, in England on May 24, as well as the following weekend in France on May 31, however she has been ruled out due to a devastating ACL knee injury suffered while training at the gym recently. Surgery last week was successful and now she begins the road to recovery. We hope to see Courtney back in action soon, and wish her all the best with her recovery and rehab!