TMX SAYS: What a weekend for the Brits!
By Sean Lawless on 5th Aug 15
Crikey! Only last week I was all for belling up Betty Windsor and urging her to bestow a Knighthood on Brad Anderson after his double EMX300 win at Loket and now Im considering placing another call to Her Maj, this time dropping Shaun Simpson, Max Anstie and Jack Bintcliffe into the mix nall!
Lommel is a beast of a track. Unforgiving, uncompromising, un-bloody-pleasant. Other than finishing second-to-last in Junior Kickstart (and the time I rode a TY80 into the middle of a duck pond), my worst-ever two-wheel experience came at the Belgian circuit during a handful of hungover laps on a DR350. So I can completely appreciate how super-human you need to be to win
back-to-back motos in that hell hole of a place.
Shaun's based in Belgium and is one of the best sand riders in the world. How much does he love the soft stuff? Remember when you were a nipper and left the lid off your tortoise-shaped sand pit? And all the local kitties went toilet in it? Well Shaun wasn't bothered – he used the doo-doo to build a massive quad jump.
Max's win isn't a massive surprise either – his old man Merv took him to Holland all the time as a nipper – and as for Ando, well, the Beast from the North East is a fierce competitor on any surface. I know a lot less about Jack but apparently he's only in his third year of riding which makes his performance all the more remarkable.
Moving away from motocross and into the world of men – and women – in lycra, congratulations are in order for James Dabill and Emma Bristow who both wrapped up national trials championships at the weekend. Dabill's sixth crown is all the more significant as it's the maiden title for the new Vertigo marque.
Finally this week, just when you thought you'd seen it all, legendary Aussie headcase Robbie Maddison's taken his dirt scoot surfing. Yep, that's right, surfing! For his latest flick ‘Pipe Dreams' the 34-year-old fitted his bike with skids and a paddle tyre and hit the waves off Tahiti.
Over the years I've been privileged to witness some crazy bike stuff first-hand – Jobe jumping over Malherbe at Hawkstone in '84, Travis Pastrana at Madrid X-Fighters, Mike Metzger when he bust out the first UK backflip, Clifford Adoptante (who remembers the Flyin' Hawaiian?) jumping in what appeared to be satin PJs.
But as far as I'm concerned the benchmark of doing mad stuff on mo'sickles has to be when Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli jumped 14 garbage cans on what looked suspiciously like a 1949 Triumph Trophy TR5 Scrambler Custom (thank you Google). Forget Evel and his double deckers or Matt ‘The Kangaroo Kid' Coulter leaping a steamboat on his quad or even Maddo catching a wave – the Fonz hitting the ramps and then stacking it into Arnold's Fried Chicken stand is the beginning and ending of FMX for me.
