The country New South Wales city of Wagga Wagga plays host to the second round of the 2003 Australian Supermoto Championship this weekend.

Yamaha are the major sponsors of the event which will see Australia’s fastest supermoto competitors compete at the specially modified Garden City Raceway.

Wagga Wagga is the largest inland city of NSW, located approximately 480km south-west of Sydney, 460km north of Melbourne and 320km west of Canberra.

Supermoto is Australia’s most exciting new sport. Spectators are treated to some amazing sideways, or ‘slideways’, action from the hybrid supermoto machines.

The motorcycles used normally started life as motocross or enduro based machines before receiving modifications for supermoto competition. These changes normally include a switch to 17” road style wheels with sticky road based rubber. Another addition is normally a large front brake to take advantage of the sticky rubber and good grip offered by tarmac. The more serious competitors also reduce the travel of the suspension and stiffen the suspension to cope with the heavy braking demands of supermoto competition.

Single cylinder powerplants provide the motivation and range up to nearly 700cc in size.

Supermoto is a huge sport in Europe and is building momentum in the USA and Australia. The best riders from Europe, the USA and Australia also compete in the World Supermoto Championship.

The track for this weekend’s second round of the Australian Championship offers an exciting mix of tar and dirt sections.

Riders will start on the tar main straight section of the Wagga Kart Track and proceed flat out for nearly 200 metres, then back off slightly for a fast right hand turn. They will be momentarily hard on the gas again before negotiating a slight left kink, then it is hard on the anchors for a tight right hand hairpin. This turn is sure to provide one of the great attractions with the fast ‘A’ grade riders backing the machines ‘slideways’ in to this turn with smoke trailing. These antics really have to be seen to be believed!

After the hairpin, the riders continue in to a gentle right hander which will see them back on the throttle hard before once again putting the machine in to a ‘slideways’ braking manoeuvre to set up for a tight left hand entry to the dirt section of the track.

The surface of the dirt section has a clay base with a layer of sand over the top. Immediately after joining the dirt, riders will hit a nearly three metre high berm and will rail around this right hand gradient before setting up for some air-time over the table top.

Upon landing the riders will slow for a left hand turn which offers only a flat surface, this is sure to be one of the trickiest parts of the track. After that testing left-hander the riders will take to the air again over a medium size double jump, followed by a set of ‘whoops’. This area of the track will see the riders with a motocross background make some ground on the more tarmac specialised riders.

After the series of six whoops the riders have another flat turn on the dirt, this time a right hander, before rejoining the tarmac and getting hard on the throttle for a fast tarmac right hand bend leading back around to the main straight.

Mark Avard was the man to beat in the premier ‘S1’ class at round one and has recently returned from competing in America, where he took out the ‘Open Expert’ win at a high profile event. Avard also came fifth overall in the American ‘Open Extreme’ class up against well known riders like Scott Russell, Doug Chandler, Jeff Ward, Steve Drew and Micky Diamond. Avard then returned home to win the recent ‘KTM Cup’ staged at Bathurst where he took the glory on his Husaberg in front of Greg Moss.

Moss will be out for revenge at Wagga on his factory KTM supermoto. This machine bristles with carbon fibre and exotic components and is worth close to $40,000!

But the KTM charge for the title will not stop with Moss, he is backed up by other top notch KTM riders such as Graham Cheney, Ricky Rice, Anton Lafforgue and Stuart Bennett.

The ‘S1’ field is full of European built machinery and only one Japanese built machine will front the grid, a Honda XR650R ridden by Nick Selleck.

While the ‘S1’ class sees the boys with the really big toys play hard, the action is even more thick and frenetic in the ‘S2’ category. Here machines of up to 450cc in capacity rub handlebars, and elbows, in both the dirt and tar sections.

Ex 500cc Grand Prix competitor Mark Willis took the glory in the ‘S2’ class at the first round of the Australian Supermoto Championship. Since then Mark has made a few modifications to his CRF450R Honda to make it more specialised for supermoto competition. A higher compression piston will provide Mark with a few more horsepower while the stiffer springs he has fitted at both ends of the machine will allow him to take full advantage of his world level racing experience through the sealed sections of the track.

The Brisbane based ex Grand Prix competitor is looking forward to this weekend. “We have had time to make some adjustments to the bike and it will be great to be going racing again after a two month layoff.

“Hopefully we can continue our unbeaten run and hold off the hordes of blue (Yamaha) machines who will challenge us, all going well I aim to keep the CRF at the front of the pack.”

And those Yamaha challenges will be strong. Adam Altham, Josh Houwen and Kym Gross will be among the leading riders aboard machines such as Yamaha’s awesome new YZ450F.

Daniel McCoy will show the outright performance of the smaller YZ250F machine by pitting it against the 450cc competition. Even with a 200cc capacity deficit McCoy is sure to figure strongly.

Suzuki is fronting this round with a couple of high profile entries aboard tricked up DR-Z400 machines. Rob Jones is a multiple trials champion and leading stunt rider. He is joined on the yellow bikes by Suzuki’s lead motocross rider, Danny Ham.

Ham recently finished second at the opening round of the four-stroke motocross nationals and will definitely put a cat among the Honda and Yamaha pigeons at Wagga this weekend.

All the drama will unfold this Sunday, June 1, in an action packed programme of racing which kicks off with practice at 9am, and competitive racing from 10am. The venue is Garden City Raceway, Tasman Road, Wagga Wagga.

Be there to witness Australia’s most spectator friendly motorcycle racing action, but be wary, once you witness the awesome action of supermoto racing, you will be hooked for life.