The 2023 Burt Munro Challenge ran throughout last week and featured seven separate motorcycle events, not to mention the festival of rally-goers who camped out and soaked up the music and camaraderie.
This festival of motorcycling event skipped a beat last year, cancelled due to restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic – and that was the first time the Burt Munro Challenge has been cancelled since it began in 2006 – but it certainly bounced back, with the bike action proving to be another truly momentous festival of motorcycling.
And now we’re already looking ahead to next year’s Burt Munro Challenge and confident it will be just as good, if not better, next time around.
But this year’s 16th anniversary Burt Munro Challenge had inauspicious beginnings as extreme wet weather closed in on the eve of day two of activities.
The city of canvas and nylon bloomed anyway at Otatara, on the outskirts of Invercargill, despite heavy rain striking the region.
The 2023 Burt Munro Challenge ran throughout last week and featured seven separate motorcycle events. Photo by Andy McGechan, BikesportNZ.com
The indefatigable attitude and indomitable spirit of the motorcycling community shone through amid a noisy soundtrack of hail, thunder and lightning at the Burt Munro Challenge week rally site on Dunns Road.
The number 8 wire mentality of the tough as nails biking fraternity was truly in evidence with many imaginative and makeshift attempts to keep out the flood-waters.
The saturated ground cover of humanity stretched for as far as the eye could see, but while flesh and fabric was saturated, the atmosphere remained warm and cheerful. It was precisely this mood that defined Southland motorcycling legend Burt Munro when he took on the world armed with little more than plucky persistence and self belief all those years ago.
The inclement weather, however, disappeared just as quickly as it arrived and, on day two of the Burt Munro Challenge on Thursday morning (February 9), warm but overcast skies greeted competitors.
Meanwhile, although warnings had been issued, little did anyone realise the full extent of a “proper storm”, Cyclone Gabrielle, that was about to vent its full fury on northern parts of New Zealand. While Northland, Auckland, Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay were being viciously battered by Cyclone Gabrielle during the week, it was mild and calm in Southland and temperatures had settled around the low to mid 20s.
With one eye and an ear on television and radio news reports about the cyclone’s progress across the upper part of the North Island, the Burt Munro Challenge went ahead like clockwork.
Burt had dodged a bullet.
Day two of the festival featured the famous Bluff Hillclimb and today we offer you a small pictorial from that event. Keep a look out as we bring you images from some of the over Burt Munro Challenge events later this week.
© Words & photos by Andy McGechan, BikesportNZ
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