After two years of planning, the Alexandra BMX Club will
finally host the South Island Championships at their own
cycle track this weekend.
The track was built for the community two years ago by Fulton
Hogan and has been worked on since then in preparation for
this weekend.
Alexandra BMX president Steve Adair said 156 riders have
registered for the two-day event, which begins at 3pm today
with the Pre-Souths.
These are warm-up races to prepare riders for the actual
title races tomorrow, beginning at 11am.
The best South Island BMX riders will be competing, as well
as a handful of riders from the North Island, coming from as
far away as Whangarei.
Riders have had the opportunity on Thursday and Friday nights
to practise their electronic gate starts, which can be
crucial in a close race.
Competitors range in age from 5 years to the "over-50s".
President of BMX New Zealand Bruce Northwood saw the track
for the first time last night and he is very impressed.
"It's a long track - about 370m - but still short of the
legal maximum limit which is 400m," he said.
Small towns generally did very well with BMX as the sport
tended to have a high profile.
"They get lost in the larger cities."
And riders will have every chance of taking their sport to
the top as the Bike New Zealand high-performance manager Mark
Elliott and high-performance coach Ken Cools will both be at
the competitions tomorrow and looking for riders to train for
the 2012 Olympics.
"Half the BMX members are under 10 years of age and it is
mainly a junior sport, but on the other side, you get people
going to Olympic Games," Mr Northwood said.
BMX had its first team at the Olympics last year.
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