Another year, another round of this popular event. The weather forecasts for the previous few days had been predicting gales and torrential rain (both of which Wellington and the West Coast got plenty of). We got strong winds but the racing was able to go ahead as planned. (You can find a large selection of shots in my gallery here.)
Local (and international) rider Josh Coppins was expected to dominate the Supermoto classes and it certainly started out that way. Here he is leading from Ross Troughton (Motueka) and Invercargill rider John Crawford:
The other rider looking to repeat past successes was Dennis Charlett from Christchurch, this year on his new Suzuki GSXR 1000 superbike:
Incidently, this year I decided to skip most of the sharp, well focused shots (such as the top one) and concentrate on capturing the speed and power of the bikes. The shot above is an example, taken with a slow shutter speed and panning the camera. So most of what follows will be in that style.
Some more of Josh:
and now a selection of some of the others:
It’s interesting to see the various cornering styles:
Finally, some of the competitors in the Classics class were a lot older than their bikes:
I was delighted to find a Velocette racing. This bike was a couple of years younger than one I used to own:
Looking at it brought back memories. For example that carburetor just below the seat. I was a student when I had mine, and wore a Canterbury scarf. One night the bike spluttered to a halt because the scarf had been sucked up into the carb. I got off and tried to pull it out (brain a bit fuddled, I suspect) but it wouldn’t come. Then I remembered to twist the throttle to open up the carb. The scarf flew out and hit me in the eye. Not pleasant, it was soaked with petrol.
This model has a rigid frame (translation: it has no rear suspension at all!) Really skinny tyres too, compared with today’s bikes. But yesterday it was surprisingly fast for a 350, circulating around 4th or 5th place behind a couple of Manx Nortons. I didn’t get many shots of it racing, but this one gives you the idea:
I’ve posted quite a few images in my gallery at New Zealand Photos Online.
