Motorsport: The World's fastest Maori

Bruce Cribb says the spikes let the machine travel almost horizontally around corners. Herald picture / Kenny Rodger

The handle may no longer be familiar, and even in his heyday Bruce Cribb's name drifted in from afar. But Cribb is definitely of New Zealand origins, and played his part in one of this country's finest speedway moments.

It's a different story concerning his speedway bike, though - an alien force built to race on ice, yet at home on the dirt in Cribb's expert hands.

This eclectic mix of man and machine will give Auckland race fans a unique experience during the New Zealand Solo Speedway Championships on Sunday afternoon.

Cribb, who won a world dirt track title alongside the legendary Ivan Mauger in the late 1970s, will hurtle after the Rosebank Rd track record on his spike-wheeled ice bike.

The 59-year-old Cribb, who has 'The World's Fastest Maori' emblazoned across the front of his gleaming 500cc Jawa machine, is confident he'll smash the record as he did in 16 out of 17 attempts at British tracks.

Not that others have found this weird mix of speedway genres as easy to master.

Cribb says: "I was in the world top 20 for ice riding but a lot of those guys were way ahead of me in skill. Yet they have tried this in Sweden and smashed up big time. I don't know why."

Cribb, whose late father Kiwi was a national speedway champion, was raised in Palmerston North before heading overseas as a teenager to pursue his career.

In the mid 1970s he answered an advertisement placed by the British speedway control board looking for riders willing to have a go at ice racing, whose strongholds include Sweden, Holland and the old Soviet Union territories.

This took Cribb deep into the old USSR to Ufa (now the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan), about 1000km east of Moscow.

It was a world away from the sort of riding Cribb was used to in Europe. Temperatures dipped to 40C below zero, the heated pits were located under the grandstand, ice walls instead of straw bales surrounded the track, and there was a sight he remembers most fondly - a spectator with "a bit of alcohol in one pocket and a mackerel in the other".

Cribb went on to pursue a dual career on traditional and ice tracks before he quit both in 1988, the year he placed third in the world ice bike championships in Holland. He made a brief comeback on ice in 1993.

Cribb, who lives in Birmingham, managed to win a New Zealand title but rarely returned here otherwise. He was persuaded out of retirement to demonstrate the ice bike at the 75th anniversary of the Palmerston North track nearly a fortnight ago.

The obvious difference between the ice bike and a normal bike are the 5cm spikes protruding through the tyres - 240 of them on the drive wheel and 120 on the front. The powerful grip allows Cribb to reach amazing speeds on tyres pumped up to 55 psi.

Cribb says: "There are no spikes on the side of the wheel. The spikes actually flex over into the track - you can go around a corner absolutely flat. Your hands touch the ground sometimes."

The ideal time to ride is after other events have cleared the top layer of loose material, giving the spikes a hard surface to bite into.

The late Burt Munro may be the New Zealand bike rider of the moment, thanks to the film The World's Fastest Indian.

But the most famous of New Zealand bike riders is former world speedway champion Mauger, who may watch Cribb at Avondale on Sunday. Along with Mitch Shirra and Larry Ross, Mauger and Cribb secured New Zealand's only world team title in the 1979 finals at London's White City.

Mauger, who lives on the Gold Coast, made it to Palmerston North and told Cribb he was keen to see his old mate again in Auckland.