Features 22 Oct 2016

Moto 360

An all-access Australian view of dirt bikes, presented by Alpinestars.

We’re on the brink of one of the busiest periods in the national motocross and supercross season, with two rounds of the 2016 Australian Supercross Championship already in the books, but four more to come in the next three weekends.

From round two at Toowoomba last weekend, the series will now travel to Adelaide next Saturday and then move onto rounds in Melbourne and Sydney during consecutive weeks – the AUS-X Open being a double-header to conclude the season.

There are some pluses and minuses in such a structure, because it is always ideal to maintain momentum in a championship, but then again it narrows the exposure that teams will get from any given round as we hop from one to the next. Sounds strange, but local teams and supporters do take that into account.

For MotoOnline.com.au, we’re anticipating one of our biggest months of the year altogether. The statistics from Jimboomba and Toowoomba have been encouraging, they will build more through Adelaide and Melbourne, then AUS-X Open should be our largest single weekend of the season.

And it terms of content, it’s a tricky one to balance, because we do want to obviously provide as much attention to rounds three and four as possible, but no doubt all eyes will soon turn to Sydney as the mammoth event draws closer. We’ll have it sorted though and are really excited to see what stems from it all.

On top of all that, directly following the AUS-X Open will be the Australian Four-Day Enduro (A4DE), which is also always a popular event in the sport locally. To be held in Mansfield, Victoria, we’re also within a month of it taking place. That’s it from me for this week, here’s Adam Spence with more…

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

As Alex said, we’re gearing up for a crazy few weeks of racing and content creation, it’s the calm before the storm. When I say storm, I mean the storm of content you will see flowing through MotoOnline.com.au. As the series rolls on, new storylines will continue to develop just as they have been during the first two rounds, there’s just so much to cover!

We’ve already seen multiple riders face adversity, riders drop out of the series, new riders join the series, and I’m sure there will be a few more surprises in the coming weeks. It’s exciting for us here at MotoOnline looking ahead knowing we’ve also got the addition of riders such as Chad Reed, Ryan Villopoto and Cooper Webb to throw in the mix for the final two rounds – as a media guy, it’s hard to beat that.

We saw a huge shake-up in the SX2 category at Toowoomba with former series champion Gavin Faith dropping out of the lead following a crash during the main event. That caused a substantial shift in the points with DPH Motorsport Yamaha’s Hayden Mellross remaining consistent with yet another second-place finish, enough to hand him the red plate heading to Adelaide. It’s been a few years since we’ve had an Australian SX2 champion, could Mellross be the guy to do it?

I’m all for American riders joining our series, but I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be exciting to see a rider such as Mellross take home the number one plate. The New South Wales native actually passed up a huge opportunity to represent Australia in the 2016 Motocross of Nations to focus on his supercross championship, so let’s hope that choice pays off in the long run.

There’s a whole lot more to talk about, but that’s all from me this week, here’s the photography magician himself, Jeremy Hammer…

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

Image: Jeremy Hammer (Foremost Media).

With a lot of hype of over Toowoomba’s second round of Australian supercross and the Monster Energy Cup last weekend, the final days of the ISDE in Spain were overshadowed to an extent, but we managed to cover it relatively closely with daily reports, highlighting our top Australian performers.

A huge congratulations must go out to the Women’s bLU cRU team who wrapped up their fourth consecutive title, which is no easy feat, especially when you look at challenges and surprises that pop up over the week long event.

Obviously, our Australian World Trophy team fell victim to bad luck in the opening day with Josh Strang’s injury and then Daniel Milner’s mechanical on day two, which also ruled him out of the event. It ultimately denied Australia the chance to defend the title, although it was great to see our remaining riders continue to give a whole-hearted effort while they battled for individual results.

Recently-crowned AORC champion Daniel Sanders had an impressive week, finishing just shy of the outright victory. It’s the second year running that Sanders has performed extremely well at the event and it will be interesting to see if any international opportunities arise for him over the next year – if that is the route he wants to go down of course.

Lastly, we can’t forget the effort from our youthful Junior World Trophy team. They commenced the week back in 10th position and in the closing days they were able to work their way into sixth, despite carrying a slim margin over Mexico going into the final day.

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