‘Clay missiles’ at Meeanee Speedway races cause crowd injuries

There have been three incidents of clay debris causing injury during the last two meets. Photo / Paul Taylor

Spectators say “clay missiles” being flung by racing vehicles into the crowd have caused injuries at two recent speedway meetings in Meeanee in Hawke’s Bay.

A Meeanee Speedway promoter says the projectiles are caused by the track’s condition after recent weather and they’re working through options to prevent it happening again.

A Hato Hone St John spokeswoman said their Event Health Services team assessed and treated two people at Saturday’s Fireworks Spectacular Meeanee Speedway event, one in a moderate condition and one in a minor condition.

Neither person required hospital treatment.

In the crowd on Saturday was Hope Wilson, who was also at one of the final events of the last speedway season in May.

At the May event, Wilson was hit and injured by a flying piece of clay debris that forced her to miss two weeks of work.

“I wasn’t watching the speedway, I was reaching to grab something and then all of a sudden I was on the ground,” Wilson said of that event.

“My partner, he was freaking out and didn’t know what to do.”

Wilson said she can’t remember exactly what happened, but she learned at the hospital she had suffered bruised ribs.

She said she had to return to ED a few days later when she learned she also had a bruised kidney.

While she wasn’t a frequent visitor to the speedway before the incident, she didn’t let the incident didn’t stop her from returning last Saturday.

“I was so scared though, I was traumatised.

“I was hiding behind my partner, actually, so I wouldn’t get hit,” Wilson said with a laugh.

She said she would like organisers to consider how to make it safer for people in the crowd.

Another Saturday spectator, Aaron Edwards, said he was sitting about as far back from the track as he could last Saturday, but some pieces of clay were still flung to where he was.

“A lady in front of us who had noticed the huge chunks of track coming our way saw this piece coming straight for her sitting on her chair,” Edwards said.

“[She] leaned forward and ducked just in time for the piece of clay to miss her. It then struck the back of her chair, totally smashing it over, and ripped the canvas straight off the chair then smashing me in the shin.”

He said the clay caught most audience members off-guard.

“The rest of the night instead of watching the race all I was watching was turn one and the clay missiles hitting the crowd.”

David Jones, club promoter for Meeanee Speedway, said the amount of rain that had fallen on the track recently had created the conditions for vehicles with narrower tyres to fling clay over the fences.

“Most clay gets caught by the fence, it very rarely goes through the fence. Some little bits and pieces get through but that is just part and parcel of being a speedway, unfortunately,” Jones said.

He said it was a problem for other speedways, too, and they would likely use a rotary hoe to bring up wet parts of the track to the surface to dry out.

He said they needed a clear spell of weather after using the rotary hoe but they haven’t had those kinds of conditions recently.

“The speedway is already dangerous enough for the competitors who are out there racing at over 100 kilometres per hour in vehicles - we don’t want anything else to happen,” he said.

He said Meeanee Speedway’s fences were currently above the height required by Speedway NZ and they likely could not be made higher without major reconstruction work.

“It only happens when you enter what we call turn one and turn three, so we are looking at possibly putting some more up in that area and possibly angling them in like you see on Nascar tracks in America.”

He said he expects conditions on the track to be safer again on time for the next meet on November 18.

James Pocock joined Hawke’s Bay Today in 2021 and writes breaking news and features, with a focus on environment, local government and post-cyclone issues in the region. He has a keen interest in finding the bigger picture in research and making it more accessible to audiences. He lives in Napier. james.pocock@nzme.co.nz