It’s tough, it’s demanding and, for so many dirt bike racers, it’s virtually impossible to finish, but that’s what the No Way In Hell extreme enduro is meant to be.
The weekend’s seventh annual Husqvarna-sponsored event had one specific aim, to really sort the men from the boys and the women from the girls, and it’s fair to say this is what happened on the rugged farmland circuit at Oparau, just a few kilometres up the road from Kawhia, on Saturday.
This event is the country’s premier extreme enduro challenge, and this year it was again organised and managed by the man who should know a thing or two about fearsome enduro racing, Tokoroa enduro wizard Sean Clarke.
This is the man who managed the 2006 International Six Days Enduro near Taupo, the only time that massive event has ever been held in New Zealand, and he certainly pulled a few tricks out of his bag to make sure the weekend’s No Way In Hell (NWIH) extreme enduro was as brutal as can be.
Only two out of more than 60 starters did finish that first race 15 years ago in 2010 and that’s also probably part of the reason why there was a nine-year hiatus after the 2014 running and the resurrection of the extreme event in 2024 had been so eagerly anticipated.
Run by the Forestland Motorcycle Club, this year’s edition was not meant to be so soul-destroying as Clarke and his work crew decided to tone down some of body-breaking qualities, just to help boost the number of potential finishers/survivors.
It worked – of the 148 starters last year, there were only 34 who managed to complete the course in the allotted five hours, but 59 managed to survive to the finish this time around, with Taupo’s Wil Yeoman (KTM 300 EXC, pictured above), Thames rider Chris Birch (KTM 350 EXC-F) and the now Masterton-based former Taranaki teenager Sam Parker (Husqvarna TE300) completing the podium.
Luke Corson (KTM 300 EXC), from Whitecliffs, west of Christchurch, and Tokoroa’s Jake Wightman (KTM 300 EXC) rounded out the top five on Saturday.
However, that finishers tally of 59 was from the 160 riders who lined up to start this time around, so it still means more than 100 individuals missed the cut-off and were declared “non-finishers”.
Therefore, although it was supposedly “fractionally easier” this year, most individuals who entered still could not finish.
“The first half of this 67-kilometre race wasn’t too demanding, but it got progressively harder after that. The riders raced the course twice and we made seven changes between laps one and two, just to lift the degree of difficulty.
“It really put the riders through the wringer. It was something to be proud of just to finish this race.
“Last year’s winner (Wainuiomata’s Jake Whitaker) took two hours and 43 minutes to finish the event (with each lap 70 kilometres long), but Yeoman took just two hours and 21 seconds this year, possibly because the terrain was so much drier and the course was a fraction shorter.
“But no matter how hard we set the course, we can’t really make it any harder. It’s a testimony, I suppose, to just how high the rider skill level has now become.”
Birch was winner of the inaugural NWIH event in 2010, the only individual to finish unaided, in a time of three hours and 12 minutes. Hokianga’s Mitchell Neild was two hours behind in second place.
Event organiser Clarke is a multi-time former New Zealand champion and a four-time medallist at the “Olympic Games of enduro racing”, the International Six Days Enduro, so he knows first-hand what it takes to win at the ultimate level of the sport.
The event was jointly sponsored by Husqvarna motorcycles, Forbes and Davies accessory distributors, O’Neal apparel, Maxima oils, Arai helmets, Ogio bags, Blur, Maxi Grip, Kiwi Rider magazine, Muck-Off, Metzeler tyres, USWE and SATCO logging attachments.
© Words by Andy McGechan, www.BikesportNZ.com
Photo by Madison Clarke
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