It's been shut for around 10 to 15 years, but on Sunday you can ride the "Devil's Drop" again.
A keen group of Wanganui motocross riders/parents/sponsors are holding a day at the reopened Kai Iwi motocross track that doubles as raising money for both track improvements and for assisting young Wanganuiriders Dylan Hollenback and Emily Toohey towards their national secondary school championships commitments in two weeks.
Dylan's father Kim Hollenback explains:
"It's a joint venture between myself, Paul Rogerson and the Toohey family. We're doing it to find somewhere for the kids to ride. It's very, very hard these days, with all the political stuff with DoC, where you can't ride in the sand dunes, you can't ride other places - it's very hard to find somewhere to ride.
"So we opened this track for the kids to ride and we've got Peter Brox, one of the top Honda riders, coming down here and running training days now, too."
Does this mean that if you ride the Kai Iwi track, you have to go down the famous "Devil's Drop", all 58m of it?
"No, the Drop is optional. What we do is that we ride all the [rest of] the track, and at the end of the day we look at a certain age group and see how confident they are on the bikes - and we say, 'this age group can come down the Drop."
Hollenback says there has been a need for such a track for the young.
"We've put in a lot of work. We've had Darren Patene out there with his bulldozer dressing it up."
Patene, who will also help with coaching, is a regular competitor again now after some years out of the sport. he has built his own 1.4km track at home in Castlecliff and opens it up for youngsters and others to train on.
His aim with yesterday's training session was to clean up in the 450cc class on Sunday. Patene was a moto cross riders in his youth, tried out jetski racing after the age of 23, and he didn't restart until six years ago when he was 39.
