Andrew Forbes has moved a lot of dirt in 19 years as owner of a Prince George heavy-equipment excavating business.
Fortunately for motocross enthusiasts, he's concentrated his company's efforts lately into making Blackwater Motocross Park a better place to race.
A project spearheaded last fall by the Prince George Motocross Association to widen, lengthen and improve the safety of the 15-year-old track 30 kilometres southwest of the city was unveiled to 100 riders from B.C. and Alberta who entered the Prince George Yamaha B.C. Motocross Association event this past weekend. The wow factor was significant.
Riders, spectators and race organizers were blown away by the new and improved track and its superb sight lines, adding to what was already one of the most spectator-friendly motocross facilities in Western Canada.
For Forbes, the project was a labour of love. He competed in the sport regularly when he was a teenager growing up on Vancouver Island and now it's a family affair. His 21-year-old son Kenton races and so does Forbes's brother Mark and his kids, Daniel, Josiah and Melody.
"I believe in Prince George and want to be part of the community and we all pitch in what we can," said Andrew Forbes. "We've had fabulous support from a lot of people here. Two weeks ago we had the best work bee we've ever had. I've only been involved in the club about two-and-a-half years and from my perspective the goal was to inspire enthusiasm, get more participation and grow the sport.
"We tried to build a track that would be a destination resort where people would come from a long distance to ride it, so we widened it and gave it more starting gates than we need at the moment, but the sport is going to grow."
Forbes had a D-8 Cat bulldozer on the site moving earth for two weeks. Tree stumps on the newly-logged areas were dug up and used to build the jumps. Covered structures for race officials and for the start area were also built. The concrete pad at the start will help keep dirt out of the start gate mechanism and help it last longer. Longtime race organizer Dale Voldeng figures it would have cost the club $100,000 to hire a private contractor to do all the work that's been done at Blackwater.
"The track is a lot better now, the flow is better and it's faster," said Voldeng. "It's a lot more fun to ride."
The 40-lane cement start gate is located closer to the hill where spectators gather. Now, instead of a dirt start gate and short straightaway that used to funnel riders into a narrow hole shot which led into a sharp corner, riders have a metre-wide strip of concrete in front of them once the gate drops. It leads to a long wide uphill that carries riders to the top of the track and around a corner over the biggest jump of the course. The bridge that passes in front of the spectators is 15 feet wider. Most sections the track have been widened to 40 feet.
"We wanted to make the track longer, but we wanted to do it in such a way that you could see it from a spectator point of view," said Forbes.
Forbes said the club will discuss further improvements to be made in time for the next race, the Printwerks BCMA championships in late August.
Forbes, 48, quit racing when he was 21 when he started raising a family but got back into it in 2011. He won the veteran junior class both days and was fourth Sunday and fifth Saturday in the plus-40 category.
The new track earned rave reviews from the racers.
"A lot of people put in a lot of hard work and it definitely paid off, the track is amazing now," said pro rider Jess Pettis. "The whole track is at least 30 feet wide and it makes it better for passing. It's quite bit longer so there's longer lap times. There's a lot of long straightaways but you're going uphill so they're not too fast. They took out that long straight downhill and that was kind of dangerous when you're going down at like 80 miles an hour. They slowed that down with a bit of an S-turn now and it's a lot safer."
Lap times are now at one minute 55 seconds for the fastest riders, 30 seconds longer than before.
"I really like the flow of it," said Sara King, 17. "I'm glad they changed it. I didn't like coming straight down that hill. You get going too fast and there were a lot of crashes."
Blackwater now has real potential to host a CMRC national race. The biggest concern is the composition of the dirt, which tends to harden and requires frequent tilling. That's complicated by the fact the dirt contains a lot of rocks that become projectiles under the torque of a spinning bike tire.
BCMA president Angela Voldeng said Forbes is looking for a nearby supply of sand to truck into the site and cover the track. Then it would be a matter of gaining sponsor approval of the track before the CMRC would consider bringing the national series to Prince George.
"It's three years down the road before it will happen," she said.
