Wellard New Zealand Yamaha Club Team at ISDE Mexico
After rising at 6am to get the day underway the Wellard Yamaha NZ team were primed to consolidate their podium position. The boys were looking forward to what we expected to be a GP style MX track with masses of enthusiastic Mexican fans, the live TV coverage and the opportunity of showing their ability is not limited to just Enduro. After arriving at the Pit Paddock and gearing up the first inkling of what had happened began to filter through. The indication that something was not right came when some riders from Finland returned from the Parc Ferme and told us the MX stage and the day had been cancelled. The team laughed it off as a joke and still readied ourselves to head off on the one hundred Kilometre trip the MX circuit. We were packing things in the vehicles for the service period that would occur prior to the Motocross stage when the news came through that the police and drug cartels had been involved in a skirmish not far from where the MX test was to be staged. It was at that time the realisation of the cancellation of the last day was true!! A crazy kind of feeling was at the Paddock. It was "no we have not finished yet, this is this not the way one of the best Six Day Enduro's deserves to end”. The Mexican's do not to deserve this. But it was true and there were real fears for our safety if we proceeded to continue. After the stark realisation had sunk in the fact was there were still winners in this shortened event. Though Karl did not get the opportunity to claw back the thirty odd seconds on first place in C1 he should be proud to have done such a good job of pushing his YZ 450F to the limit and winning three days outright of the event. Considering I only rang him the day before we left for Mexico to tell him to pack his riding gear as well because he was off the reserve list and onto the main team after Adam's unfortunate hand injury (which is healing quite well), he has proved his worth time and again. Adrian is your typical 'just do it' rider. Wellard could have given him a tricycle to ride instead of a race proven YZ 250F and he still would have come up smiling. In third outright in C2 for most of the week and in the top fifteen outright in the 250 class he was looking forward to throwing a big whip in the Motocross right past the Spanish rider who he has been chasing through the countryside all week. If you have been looking at the video blogs you will see Adrian say how tough Morelia and this Six Day Enduro have been and for you guys who know him well enough if he thinks it was tough you better believe it. My personal favourite rags to riches story is about a guy we rang only a couple of days before the event started when we had a rider shortage due to another injury. Chris Power was not only rearing to go, but managed to jump through all the official paperwork hoops and get everything we needed to become part of the team. Just take a moment and think about what you would have done, most people would have gone: "it starts in three days, there is two days travelling in aeroplanes to get there... It's too hard.” Well, because Chris is not your normal type of character (no offence Chris), he was like a rat up a drainpipe onto that plane. After meeting his bike for the first time only minutes before he raced the wheels of it for nearly six days, Chris was rewarded with a fourth outright in the C2 division and will go down in history with his team mates, whose combined scores were good enough to claim second place outright from seventy four Club teams in Morelia this year. It has been a real roller coaster of fortune the 2010 Morelia Mexico International Six Day Enduro and it has had lots of twists and turns along the way. But one thing is for sure: the Wellard Yamaha New Zealand Team really had lots of tongues wagging. I'm off to have a celebration drink with the team as they are all around the pool whilst I'm tapping away on the keys keeping you all informed. Keep an eye out for our last few days and posts on the Mexican adventure. Adios.
Follow the previous 12 days: www.wellardgroup.com/our_events/isde_2010/team_news/team_news.phtml YouTube Day 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glZN3NwKtTw
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