Merriman's enduro future up in the air

By KELLY EXELBY
A decade-long drought is set to be broken this year when Tauranga two-wheel maestro Stefan Merriman returns to ride in New Zealand.
That's if the four-time world champion can find a team who wants him.
As incongruous as it sounds, Merriman yesterday winged his way back to his European base in Italy without a guaranteed ride for the '06 world motorcycling enduro series after parting company with Italian-based UFO Corse Yamaha two months ago.
Merriman is psyched that Taupo will play host to one of the biggest motocross events on the international calendar in mid-November, the International Six-Day Enduro. He hasn't ridden competitively in New Zealand for 10 years but his top priority right now is finding a team to ride for when the season starts next month.
"It's a pretty unnerving time right now for me so I'm going back to Italy to try and get a contract," the 32-year-old said.
Merriman left Yamaha at the end of last season, unhappy at the Japanese parent company's decision to retrench part of their enduro funding and put it into motocross and superbikes.
"The Japanese actually have very little to do with the running of the team - it's all run from Italy - but the (Yamaha) team made the decision to withdraw some budget from enduro and not spend so much," Merriman said.
"I was facing a fairly big drop in salary, which I wasn't keen about, so I thought I had better move teams."
Finding a ride has proved harder than Merriman envisaged and he still hasn't picked up a replacement contract. "Four times world champion doesn't mean anything - once the budget's gone it's gone."
Merriman's biggest problem is that he's self-managed, preferring to ride instead of paying attention to details such as contracts and salary. By the time he got around to touting himself to rival teams for this season, most had the "No Vacancy" signs up.
"Leaving it so late has meant I'm facing a big drop in salary even if I do get a contract, so I might have been better where I was."
Merriman battled injury last season on his way to second in the world championships, twisting knee ligaments as well as rupturing his spleen, which put him out of the 16-round world series for a month.
While the likes of Josh Coppins and Ben Townley scoop the headlines riding in the world MX1 championship, Merriman is scarcely heard of. Enduro, despite the demands its name suggest, is one of the lesser understood avenues of motorcycling.
World championship rounds comprise two eight-hour days of offroad riding. Riders cover 200-300km per day and get just 15 minutes to work on the bikes after the first day of competition, carrying out their own repairs.
"It's pretty much like a car rally - there's transport stages and special stages. The transport stages are all offroad, with no navigation and check points get to."
Special stages are 5-10km long, forcing riders to go hell-for-leather. They are often separated by hundredths of a second.
Merriman first sprang to prominence in trials bike riding, winning the junior world championship in 1989 as a 15-year-old. That trials experience should come in handy in Taupo, where 600-700 riders will take the six-day race over terrain featuring forestry trails and farmland.
"Enduro's full of tricky terrain that can throw anything at you - mud holes, big drops, tight turns. That's probably why I enjoy it so much - it's a lot of time on the bike as opposed to riding motocross where the races are 30-45 minutes long.
"Enduro's also a weird mix of disciplines - sprint sections and real endurance legs where you can go for three hours at a time. The ISDE (six-day) races really take it out of you."
Merriman, who has kept fit during six weeks back in Tauranga by running up Mauao and riding at Ohauiti's Maddix Park motocross track, is as confident as he can be about 2006. "Sure I'm a bit worried about what this year will bring, but I still love the sport and I'm confident I'll do well once I find somewhere to ride. I'd like to settle down eventually ... but I'm not ready to give it all away just yet."