Hugh still has plenty of rev left at 72

FORMER four-times world motorcycle road racing champion Hugh Anderson actually much preferred riding bikes in the dirt.
He returns to his first love this weekend where he's one of the featured riders/speakers in Robert Cochrane's "Legends Of Dirt Festival" at the Wanganui Racecourse.
Now 72, Anderson will ride a 1966 Matchless Vitesse in several events over the weekend the second day of which features a classic and twinshock trial at Matipo Park.
"It belongs to a friend, but it's identical to one I built in 1964 and sold that will probably be there as well. I've ridden the bike a few times already, and quite enjoyed it."
Anderson, in fact, is considering having a full crack at the national classic moto cross championship next season.
"Most guys over 60 are wise enough not to go near the bloody things but I'm a slow learner."
Why?
"As a young chap I believed the road race people were absolute gods. I was truly a student of all forms of motorcycle competition from the age of 10."
"I read about the first big meeting after the [Second] World War, which was at the Isle of Man I sat and thought, 'I'd like to go there one day'. A real buzz went up my backbone."
But that thought while never forgotten was put on the backburner while Anderson did the other things a kid does, like playing rugby etc.
"But I always played with bikes, even though I thought about guys like Les Graham [world champion 1949] I thought 'I can't do that'."
"But I could ride off-road, because I had been riding around paddocks, and all I wanted to do really was to be a scramble, or off-road rider. But no New Zealanders, at that stage, had gone to Europe and succeeded. It wasn't the trail I could follow."
So where to from there?
"I won my first moto cross title when I was 18. I never rode on the road I always rode along the side. The bike was always covered in mud. That was me."
"But no one was going from New Zealand in motocross and coming back. I didn't know exactly what was happening in motocross, whereas in road racing they were sending a team."
Their fare was subsidised by the British Auto-cycle Union.
"So I thought, if I want to go to Britain racing motorbikes, it will have to be in roadracing."
Anderson was a student of New Zealand's war history as well, so motorbikes, and wanting to tour the area, led him to Europe.
And that's how the history of New Zealand's most famous motorcycle road racer started.
Now he's back with his first love, and he'll be in action at the Wanganui Racecourse on Saturday, and helping introduce the main attraction twice former world 500 motocross champion Jeff Smith, who's had a glittering career as a competitor, and also as an administrator.
The action on Saturday starts at 11am, with a dinner at Infusions at 7pm followed by Sunday's trial.