The brand new Yamaha YZ65 has not been on the market for very long, but the impact felt at the weekend's New Zealand Mini Motocross Championships near Porirua was massive.
It was a Yamaha 1-2-4 at the top of the premier 9-11 years’ 65cc class at the Moonshine track, in the Akatarawa Valley, about halfway between Lower Hutt and Porirua, and the results really don't come much better than that.
More than 160 riders entered this year's TSS Red Baron Motorcycles and Friday Homes-sponsored mini nationals and were greeted by an immaculately-prepared track at Moonshine, an ideal venue for the stars of the future to express themselves.
Mount Maunganui's Rhys Carter is counting down the days before he makes his race debut on his new Yamaha YZ450F.
The 28-year-old signed on to race for Yamaha last month, but he is yet to perform in a race proper and that will happen next month at the grandest of all dirt bike events, the annual Motocross of Nations, commonly referred to as the "Olympic Games of motocross".
Carter, a professional motocross coach and the 2018 New Zealand MX1 No.4, will be joined by national MX1 No.2 Cody Cooper, also from Mount Maunganui, and Auckland's two-time and current national MX2 (250cc) champion Hamish Harwood, in representing New Zealand at the MXoN at Red Bud, Michigan, in the United States on the weekend of October 6-7.
The high-profile AmPro Yamaha Race Team in the United States now has another Kiwi to wave their flag.
Te Awamutu cross-country ace Rachael Archer has signed on to ride a Yamaha YZ250FX in the US later this year and for the entire 2019 season of racing the women’s grade in the Grand National Cross-country Championships (GNCC).
It follows on from the successful career enjoyed by Manawatu’s Paul Whibley, who also raced for the AmPro Yamaha Race Team, run by American legend Randy Hawkins, and it was Whibley’s recommendation that led to Archer being offered the contract, effective from October 1.
“I am very excited about the opportunity I have been offered,” said Archer, aged 16, a year 12 pupil at St Peter’s School in Cambridge.
Perhaps the unluckiest of all Kiwi sporting heroes, Otago's Courtney Duncan has just been ruled out for the rest of the 2018 motocross world championship season.
The 22-year-old from Palmerston, near Dunedin, had been perhaps just four races away from winning the Women’s Motocross World Championships (WMX) title this season – with just two races at each of the two remaining rounds, in The Netherlands this coming weekend and in Italy on September 30, left to wrap up her 2018 campaign – but injury has now dashed her hopes.
Winning major motocross events ... that's something that Whanganui's James Rountree has been making a habit of in recent weeks.
The 16-year-old, a year 12 pupil at Whanganui High School, seems virtually untouchable at the moment, in the lower North Island at least, with his trophy cabinet now bulging with Whanganui, Manawatu and North Island title trophies after a string of impressive performances in recent weeks.
At Friday's North Island Secondary Schools Championships in Whanganui, Rountree took his 2018-model Yamaha YZ250F to finish 4-1-1 in his three races in the junior 15-19 years' 250cc grade and then backed that up by taking his 2018 Yamaha YZ125 to also score a hat-trick of wins in the junior 15-19 years' 125cc grade.
Aucklander Callan May has another piece of silverware for his bulging trophy cabinet.
He settled for a runner-up finish, behind friend and rival Sam Greenslade, at the weekend's third round of six in the popular Yamaha and MotoSR-sponsored NZXC cross-country series, an event that also doubled as the third and final round of the parallel-but-separate Motomuck Woodhill Two-Man Series.
And while May (Yamaha YZ250FX) was able to stretch his points advantage at the top of the senior table in the NZXC Series – after also winning the first two rounds of that competition – his runner-up finish at Woodhill on Sunday was enough too for him to wrap up the outright win in the Motomuck competition.
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