It's not simple to prepare a track for Arenacross dirt bike racing. To build one that takes up an acre of land requires 60 dump truck loads of dirt and four pieces of equipment working over a weekend.
Yet that's not stopping the inaugural Cycle North B.C. Northern Exhibition Fall Fair Arenacross Race from being held Friday and Saturday at the exhibition grounds.
Kourtney Lloyd, who's with Cycle North, is organizing the race with the help of Ross Johnson, the Canadian Arenacross champion. Johnson, a member of the Cycle North Honda professional team, lives in Washington state where he's involved with similar races.
"Alex [Huber, the BCNE's president] contacted me, seeing if I would want to do it, sponsor it and have Ross come and do the tracks and everything just because they're a hit down in the states.," Lloyd said. "So we just put our heads together and decided to do one... do a tear, see how it goes."
Another thing that motivated Lloyd to organize the race is their amateur motocross racing team, which has been around for approximately six years.
There will be eight classes that will be able to participate in the races, which range from five year olds to those over 30. They'll be riding dirt bikes ranging from 50 to 450 cc. Lloyd said she expects 80 participants, who come from all over B.C. and Alberta. Anyone is welcome to participate; the fee is $25 per class.
"We want to welcome anyone that's thinking about getting into racing or if anybody wants their kid to get into it, so it's a cheap way for them to come and get the feel for it."
Sign up begins at 3 p.m. each day, with the main show beginning at 6 p.m.
The course, which takes around 35 seconds to make a lap, will have a big double with a table top, as well as a whoop section, which is an area of the course that has lots of smaller bumps.
"A lot of the kids around here haven't done a lot of whoop so it's going to be cool to see them all try and figure those out," Lloyd said.
When constructing the track the jumps have to be built up then watered down to ensure they become hard and don't fall apart, Lloyd said.
"Then [Johnson] has to get on the bike and make sure the track flows properly and then make changes where they're needed," she said. "It's a lot of work to put a track in."
The track is also smaller and tighter than a traditional motocross track, which comes with an advantage.
"In a normal outdoor track, you can't see half of it as a spectator, but with Arenacross, because it's so small and so tight, the crowd gets to see 100 per cent of the action," Lloyd said.
