MOTORCYCLING: Beach races an addiction for speedster

ANENDRA SINGH
THESE days life's a beach for Graham Wedlake. Whipping his motorised beast into a frenzy of more than 200km/h in straight stretches on the beaches with other riders is something Wedlake lives for.
"It's like an addiction. It gets into the veins and you can't get it out," says the 43-year-old from Havelock North.
So much so, that he'd like it to be the last thing he ever does on Earth.
"I'd be happy if I went to my grave on my bike," says Wedlake, who will compete in the the Southland Motorbike Club's five-event beach races in Invercargill on Friday. The inaugural beach race was staged last year.
It was generated through interest in the life of Kiwi motorbike racer Burt Munro, of Invercargill, who had a succession of New Zealand road and beach records from the 1950s to the 1970s. In 1962 he covered the standing quarter mile at Invercargill in 12.31 seconds.
A movie about his life, The World's Fastest Indian, in which Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins played Munro, was released about the same time as last year's race was held.
In Invercargill, where the field is expected to be around 250, Wedlake will open throttle on his Honda CR500 around 1km laps of the beach, completing 32km in about 18 minutes and reaching up to 225km/h.
And no, it's not a softer landing when the riders lose their perch; sand can feel like sandpaper on the skin. "You do have second thoughts when you have bad meetings, bad smashes and a badly smashed-up body, and the cost builds up, but you just pick yourself up and carry on," says Wedlake, who also does some jetskiing at Waimarama Beach.
A former professional speedway driver from Britain, Wedlake first got a taste of bikes thanks to his family in Neath, Wales.
A Norwegian boarder with his grandmother, the late Ride Eyde, taught him the basics when he was a youngster. By the time he was 10 years old his late father, Royston, had bought him his first bike. At 15, Wedlake was ranked third in the schoolboys' competition in the United Kingdom.
The stadium speedway tracks beckoned, but that flirtation didn't last and he found himself racing as a semi-professional in Oxford, Milton Keynes and Long Eaton, in England.
However, in 1988 Power Promotions lured him and English teammate Paul Atkins to race at the Meeanee Speedway tracks in Napier and other venues around the country for five months.
Wedlake struck up a rapport with the Bay and two years later he and Atkins settled here.
Asked if there were any highs in his career, Wedlake says: "There have been so many and they are like personal achievements, but for me to come here as a 23-year-old and to have a great lifestyle is the best."
Wedlake, who manages a Hastings roofing maintenance company, Edwards and Hardy, counts his blessings that his employers support his petrol-head ambitions.
The day after the beach race, Wedlake competes in the two- race, tarseal Super Motard at Teretonga on his "state-of-the-art" 550cc V twin-injected Aprilia. Then on Sunday, November 25, he'll try to tame Wyndham St in a road race.
He thanked Strada Motorsport, in Mount Maunganui, and Vortex Traders, in Hastings, for their sponsorship.