Harrisville - what a difference two days make!

As a track builder Kiwi Greg Atkins reputation is second to none.  He manages all the tracks in the MX1 / MX2 and MX3 world.

The Americans love his work as well and that's well documented, especially what he and his right hand man Justin Barclay, did to Colorado for the 2010 MXoN.

Greg and Martine live in Hasselt, Belgium.  They have a 5-year-old daughter Robyn.  Martine is a Physiotherapist who specialises in childbirth recovery. 

Hasselt  is capital of the Flemish provence of Limburg and has a population of 70,000.  Belgium is 22 million. Many motocrossers base themselves at Hasselt due to the geographical access to many motocross tracks.

Doug Smith has managed the track at Harrisville for many years and the PukeMX Committee approved Tony Cooksley and Scott Henderson of taking Harrisville to a higher level. Tony and Greg are mates and at the last MXoN in St Jean de Angeles in France Greg agreed to come and help.

Greg's philosophy is you can have big jumps but make them safe.  You don't build a table-top with a steep landing, it must be sloping away.  You don't have triples, you have a single and a tabletop with a landing sloping away.  Also riders now carry more speed.
 
This is what he has done in two days.



Firstly Greg wanted mulch for the corners, so for the Club Day on Sunday a truck and trailer load, courtesy of Treescape, was brought  in. Here being towed out by Porter Hire's digger.

After it was ripped into the SX section entry corner and the Finish Line corner, Harrisville had 70mm of rain dumped on it on Friday.  The bottom of the SX section was a quagmire until Neil Edgecumbe was sent in, in the digger to drain it. At the end of Sunday it was hard pack again but those corners held up amazingly well.


When have you ever seen ruts like this at H'ville? -  the Finish Line during Round 3.


This was the view at 7pm (Monday night) after Greg had worked his magic.  Carl Sorenson was there helping and learning and whilst Greg was on the bulldozer, Shey Cooksley was compacting it all with the digger seen here on #7.  Notice #7, the landing is now 40 metres long.  Check out those rollers in the foreground, they are 10 metres wide!  But wait there's more, let's go to the bottom of #5.


This is the bottom of #5, yep that's a triple step-up if you want it to be.  It's steeper than it looks here but it's not just the preserve of the fast riders. Lesser riders can safely single all the way up.


A very safe, wide landing from #5 into the rollers.


This is from the tabletop after the rollers - sorry about the setting sun!!  Carl Sorenson will tidy up the edges with his tracked Bobcat.


5-yr-old Robyn Atkins poses in the turn into #7 to show how big that berm is.  Those old signs are now buried with more dirt.

Also those 6 x 7 tonne concrete bridges atop the grassed area have been sold and were transported out by Robbie Edgecumbe on Tuesday.  Robbie has also been kept busy ferrying diesel and Elf Lubricants to the machinery, as he has done for many years including Mercer.


Looking backwards from the top of a widened #7 - sorry about the sunspots.


#9 has been re-named #8 and note higher again.  Photo is deceiving, in that the edge of the drop-off is the right hand side of the tracks.

Greg working on the landing of the new #8 drop-off.  It's much steeper than it looks here.


Bottom turn off #8 and that berm has been built up.


Tuesday and this is the new #9 - iPhone pic from Scott Henderson.  Neil Edgecumbe was on the second machine under Greg's direction.


The old sweep up to #10 was too fast so Greg built a dog-leg to the right squaring up the approach. Huge amounts of dirt have been moved. Another iPhone pic from Scott.

#10 is being shortened with a long sloping landing before riders sweep up to the Finish Line.  Several experienced riders viewed the track last night and were in raptures over the changes.  PukeMX is truely indebted to Greg Atkins.


That huge Asian Poplar that blocked the view 'out the back' has gone.  Whilst everyone was talking about it Graeme McNeil went and felled it!

There is no Practice this Saturday but readers are welcome to come and help at the 'working bee' from 9.30am.