Dack Attack still flat out loving it
Torquay motocross legend Craig Dack is delighted the sport is coming to his back yard this Saturday night when supercross racing is held at GMHBA Stadium
great balance, and it helped me unwind and relax … and we used to have a lot of test tracks for training. Torquay was all about the balance I needed for my career, and I just fell in love with the place.”
Pretty well any paddock was a test track, and there were dozens of them. Up the road was Barabool’s McAdam Park, one of the oldest motocross venues when it was shut down in 2015. Dack was the face of the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to save it, but news of a possible new track at Fyansford has given him hope Geelong can become a motocross hub again.
The drop-off from the sport’s halcyon days is something Dack has had to manage, alongside coping with development and population growth claiming track after track, and changing Torquay’s identity too.
At least, as a team owner, he can team up with other surviving good seeds and make a difference to keep the sport strong.
As more than 10,000 people prepare to get their pulses racing at GMHBA Stadium on Saturday night, the hope is the show he helps put on can inspire careers, perhaps as much to the tune of international superstar Chad Reed, who launched into the stratosphere under Dack’s guidance.
Since he leant his profile to the team in 1992, it has won 26 national titles. But it all means nothing unless everything he does helps fuel the sport’s future — whether it be the closeness to danger, the distinct smell, or the noise that will fuel a primal instinct on Saturday.
“I’m a firm believer that every boy, when he’s born he wants to walk, and when he can walk they generally want to learn to ride a pushbike, and one day that turns into “vroom, vroom” noises — think the cardboard in the spokes to make ‘engine noise’. And a lot of boys then want to ride a motorbike,” Dack said.
“It’s a proud moment for me to display our sport, especially to the people who see it but maybe don’t understand it, to give them the opportunity to understand what it’s like
“This is my watch, and I’m only a custodian of a certain part of the sport at the moment, and we all are. It is declining in some ways, but it’s growing in others.
“You try to leave it better off than you found it, that’s my MO.”