THE COOLEST RACES IN THE WORLD
During my two-month motorcycle adventure in New Zealand, one of my ambitions was to ride down to the southern tip of the South Island to the motorcycle mecca of Invercargill and witness the famous four-day Burt Munro Challenge Races. What I found there was more impressive than I had ever imagined. The schedule change for the event from November to February has proven to be an outstanding success with better weather guaranteed. The crowds attending the events surpassed, surprised and then simply blew away the hard-toiling team of Southlanders who make this iconic yearly event possible.
There were 500 riders waiting at the gates of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest motorcycle rally… and that was on Wednesday, a day before the gates were due to open – the other 2500 arrived the next day! One of the Rally highlights, the Indian Motorcycle Oreti Beach Race sold out before the practice had started, and the counting stopped after 3000 folk had passed through the gates (there were over 1000 bikes, from classics to racers, parked on the beach with the shuttle service going hard-out from the rally site as well). Another event, the E Hayes & Sons circuit racing at Teretonga and Oreti Park Speedway, ended up not charging for the
