New Zealand’s annual commotion of internal combustion
“Tape’s up and we’re underwaaay!”
The commentator’s voice was beginning to sound like an old friend’s. It was, after all, the fifth event I’d heard the same bloke call in the last four days, each with as much passion for the racing and knowledge about both the riders and machines as the first. And I still had another day of racing left.
I’m standing against the fence at the Oreti Park Speedway at Invercargill in New Zealand and the 1000cc sidecars are covering me and the hundreds of other delighted fans in lime and crusher dust as they blast their way around the 408m-long track. It’s the world’s southern most Speedway track and it sits less than a kilometre from Oreti Beach, the very sands on which Burt Munro used in the early 1960s as a proving ground for his record-breaking 1920 Indian Scout. The same beach, in fact, where I witnessed Burt’s great nephew Lee Munro wind his modern-day Indian Scout streamliner up to speed just the day before.
I’m at the 2019 Burt Munro Challenge, a delightfully unique jam-packed event that hosts six different disciplines of motorcycle racing across just four days. But they’re not token races to delight the battle-hungry spectators, these are the real deal. Take the hillclimb, for example, or to use its correct name, the 2019 New Zealand Hill Climb Championships. It’s been held on the steep 1.4km-long climb up Bluff Hill every year since the late 1920s when it was nothing more than a dusty gravel road, even old Burt himself was a regular competitor.
Or the Speedway, where fans were treated to the talents of three-time New Zealand solo champion Bradley Wilson-Dean as well as Danish star Thomas Jorgensen, the circuit and street racing fans were graced with the quick and talented Jamie Astudillo, the 18-year-old American girl who has raced motocross since she was four and who has vowed to make a career out of road racing. Then there was fast and versatile Aussie Damien Koppe who, after coming so close last year, was determined to win every race he entered. He was going well, too, until his KTM 450 gave up the ghost half-way through the 50-lap feature race on the beach for coveted Burt Munro Trophy.
But the thing that is wildly evident at every event of the annual Burt Munro Challenge isn’t the big names, or their perfectly prepared machinery, or even their epic and always close on-track battles. But it’s the ‘bit of Burt’ in the races, the riders, their attitudes and their set-ups. Often basic, but generally resourceful and, unlike motorcycle racing in most parts of the world, always without ego.
Read the full story in the current issue (Vol 68 No 18) on sale now
Words Kellie Buckley Photography Typology & KB