Pain in the neck
Broken rider stops play at Hawkstone Park
I’M NOT ‘world’s best’ at anything but I can ride a bike okay and when you’re chiefly in it for the ride, the big events are a thrill not a stress. Sometimes I’m in it for the challenge too and getting to Hawkstone Park in Shropshire for one of the biggest enduro events in the UK enduro calendar, the Fast Eddy Cross Country, round six of the new World Enduro Super Series, was a mission. The problem was I crashed heavily a few days before Hawkstone, duffing myself and the KTM 300 EXC TPI up. KTM enduro bikes crash well – the soft bits (radiators) bent, the plastic bits just scuffed and the fundamental things simply took the hits and got up. Luckily Eurotek KTM (eurotekktm. com) came up trumps with a replacement radiator delivered the next day and after a good few hours in the garage straightening things the 300 was ready. More ready than the rider it turned out… Saturday at Hawkstone was a sprint race format – three shots of two loops around Hawkstone’s famous track and hillside, each timed accumulatively. Like Motogp qualifying but six ‘laps’ as fast as you can all added together. It was great fun and the 300 two-stroke felt punchy and alert. It was a great crack following awesome riders like Taddy Blazusiak, Billy Bolt and Graham Jarvis. I qualified for Sunday’s main race but all day it had been dawning on me I wasn’t fit to tackle two-and-a-half-hours of cross-country. The TPI was ready but I had pains in my neck and shoulder, so decide to duck out – not something I make a habit of. Next up Weston Beach Race…