Yamaha rider Blade Degen has been doing so well on provincial motocross circuit he's being stripped of his junior classification.
Now that the CMRC Spring Series has ended, Degan is now officially an intermediate rider.
It's only his second year of racing but the 16-year-old from Prince George has made steady progress in the junior ranks.
"I'm moving up to intermediate for the fall season and it's going to be crazy -- a lot more competition," Degen said. "They're good, and I'm a bit nervous for it, but I'll progress and I'll do good."
The intermediate class is dominated by riders in the 16- to 20-year-old age range and most have more experience racing than Degen. He went straight from racing the 85cc class as a racing rookie last season to competing this spring as a junior.
Degen was a busy rider over the weekend as the Spring Series wrapped up with two days of racing at Prince George Motorsports Park (PGMP). With help from a local sponsor who repaired his bike, he missed only one of the Spring Series events.
"I seized my bike a few races ago and Alpine Motorsports really hooked me up," Degen said.
Whatever they did to his bike, it ran well on the weekend. In the junior grand prix class, Degen was third Saturday and fifth Sunday, while in the junior MX-2 events he was third Saturday and sixth on Sunday.
Degen has been riding a dirt bike since he was eight, although he didn't get involved in racing until last year. He's hoping to compete next week in the Western Canadian championships in Raymond, Alta.
"As soon as I got on the Yamaha I progressed a lot faster than when I was on the Honda, for sure," said Degen.
NEW TRACK PUT TO THE TEST
Long before last year, when Shane Lodjn bought the land which now makes up PGMP, there were motocross trails adjacent to the quarter-mile drag strip.
The new home of the Prince George Motocross Association dates back 15 years when the track was part of North Central Motorsport Park, owned by Ron Cowie of Burnaby.
Prince George Motocross Club track builder Dale Voldeng said it never caught on as a venue for motocross because of the fees Cowie wanted to charge the club for its race events.
"We built the track but they said they wanted $1,000 a race, plus half the gate, and we couldn't do that as a non-profit organization" said Voldeng.
As an alternative, the club, then known as the Interior Motorcycle Association, elected to build its own facility 45 minutes southwest of the city at Blackwater Motorcycle Park. But the Blackwater dirt was difficult to maintain and without constant grooming it became hard-packed. By comparison, the dirt at the new track is mostly easy-to-maintain sandy loam.
Voldeng, whose son Jeremy won Saturday's schoolboy class, spent 2 1/2 weeks pushing dirt with a loader to build the trails for last weekend's races. Compared with the Blackwater facility, PGMP is flatter and less visible to spectators. Blackwater has a large hillclimb built into the track and almost the entire course was visible from a berm that runs the length of the track.
Because of its isolation, south of West Lake provincial park, Blackwater posed more problems for race organizers who could not leave equipment on the site for fear of vandalism. The new track is about 20 minutes from downtown, which reduces the travel time for emergency crews, a legitimate concern in a sport in which serious injuries regularly happen.
"[On Saturday] we had to have an ambulance come [when junior rider Mitch Wheeler of Vanderhoof got knocked out when he crashed trying to land a jump] and it only took him 15 minutes instead of 45," Voldeng said.
"It's a little more technical than some of the tracks, some trickier stuff, just lots of jumps coming out of corners and landing into corners. The dirt's not quite as hard on the body when you hit the ground. Blackwater was always good on a race day because we always fixed it up, but you could never ride there. It was just like cement with marbles on it."
The PGMP track is now about 10 or 15 seconds per lap shorter than Blackwater. The club plans to make the course longer and will cut down a few trees to increase visibility for spectators. A culvert will be installed under the track to allow spectators to walk to the middle of the course and Voldeng, a longtime racer who won the veteran class Saturday, wants to build a trail around the track to allow access for a water truck for track maintenance.
