Senior Sunday Extreme Pony Express - Race Report

Sunday 31st of July saw the running of the first Senior Sunday Extreme Pony Express at McAdam Park, Barrabool. The Pony Express was the culmination of a four event project put together by the Sporting Motorcycle Club to provide racing just for senior riders 16 yeras and over and by all accounts it was a great success with competitors raving about the course.

The Senior Sunday team had spent most of the preceding week setting up the course and the competitors were greeted by the site of a circuit that wound its way through and around the motocross track and down and across the valley before making its way back to the lap scoring station at the top of the track's start straight.

The extreme sections of the course included some gnarly log crossings and a pipe/log combo that looked like it needed a trials bike to get over! The nastier sections also had a longer alternate route for those of us who chose to take them though there were still obstacles aplenty regardless of which route you chose.

The event was proving immensely popular even before the day with pre-entries filling the allowed quota by Saturday afternoon and entries closing thereafter.

The duration was three hours with each team having two riders, lap times averaged about 7 - 10 minutes depending on your amount of talent or whether you ended up on the ground each lap (I did, quite a few times). The rider changeover/pit area was on one side of the start straight with a muddy bog hole section of the course on the other side.
There were lots of new faces that competed as well as quite a few old ones that came out of the woodwork which was great to see.

The Vets class was won by Trevor Boyd and Andrew Jackson, the Over 501cc class was taken out by Attila Szerda and Karl Zausa and the Outright and Under 501cc class win went to the team of Nathan Thomas and Tom Ovens.

A huge thanks must go to Peter Ovens and Gary Adams for all their work in setting up the event, also a big thanks to Max Thomas and all the guys who helped with setting out the course. Thanks also to Glenda, Michelle and everyone else who helped on the day with lap scoring.

Andrew Fratantaro.