Bikini contest rip-off says budding model

KATE NEWTON
Nineteen-year-old Alyse Hedley has a warning for any girls wishing to be models at the Freestyle MotoXXX show - think again.
The show that hit town a year ago and is set to return, left Alyse and about 30 other girls feeling exploited and ripped off, she said.
Alyse responded to an advertisement looking for models to take part in a bikini competition, as part of the Freestyle MotoXXX extreme sport event, in March last year.
When event organiser Craig Douglas promised her and some equally stunning friends $35 an hour, Alyse thought she had struck it lucky.
But after intense training all day on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning before the show, with no food or drink supplied, Alyse started to think something wasn't right.
Some of the girls started to ask when they would be paid and were silenced with free tickets, Alyse said.
On the night of the show, girls whose job it was to stand near a ring of fire were fainting and throwing up from the heat and when they asked for water were told they didn't need any.
Alyse said Douglas also promised her a photo shoot to appear in the Jim Beam calender but she had not heard anything once he left town.
The winner of the bikini competition was supposed to walk away with $1000 but hadn't received a cent from Douglas, she said.
"It was a while ago but the girls still remember what they went through," Alyse said.
She regretted not signing a contract with Douglas because there was nothing she could do now but caution other girls.
"I just want young girls to be warned. He makes a whole lot of promises, talks himself up, and doesn't deliver," she said.
"If he's going to rip off a whole lot of girls then he's going to do it again."
Last year fans were left frustrated and scared when the 3500-strong queue into the event bottlenecked.
Douglas had claimed 600 tickets had been stolen from his van, so police checked all tickets but were unable to say whether any stolen ones had been found.
Douglas told Hawke's Bay Today there had been a mix-up last year between a woman he hired to look after employment and the girls who were hired.
He couldn't remember the full name of the woman but said all the girls had been paid.
"I just wish they would stop talking behind my back and call me directly," he said.
However, Alyse and her mother, Wendy, said he had hung up on them when they tried to call and he had stopped taking their calls.
Douglas said he had the problem only with the girls in Hawke's Bay. He would keep it simple and go through an agency when his new show, Full Throttle Auto X, came to town at the end of May. The show would be hosted indoors and outdoors at the Hawke's Bay Showgrounds.
Meanwhile, Alyse says she has learnt her lesson and signed with Nitro Models to avoid pay hassles and also works for Speights Alehouse.