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EVENTS: Moto Gymkhana DATES for 2019.

Posted

4 April 2019

Ross Mowbray

The dates for this year’s British Moto Gymkhana Championship have been confirmed – with the action kicking off at Bruntingthorpe on March 9.

If you’ve not heard of it before, Moto Gymkhana is a high energy, technical motorcycle sport that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s all about skill – requiring accurate control, bursts of speed and ruthless braking to navigate a pre-designed course in the shortest amount of time, with the least amount of errors. It’s arguably the most fun you can have in first gear on a motorcycle – and best of all, it’s super easy to get involved.

At MoreBikes we’re always looking for something different to get our teeth stuck into – and while poring over videos of Japanese blokes tearing through a pre-set course of multi-coloured cones on motorcycles twice their size, we couldn’t quite believe the level of skills and close quarters control on display. It caused our jaws to drop – and we knew we had to give Moto Gymkhana a go. And that’s exactly what we did – spending time with Andrew Freeman, boss man at the Moto Gymkhana Association in the UK – who showed us the ropes; explaining what the different coloured pylons (cones) mean, how a competition course works, teaching us a few moves, before diving into our first competition.

Tensions were high as we rocked up to Donington for Round One of the Moto Gymkhana Championship. We’d had a little bit of training with Andrew, and spent some time getting to know our Bandit 600S – but looking over the course map for the first time, we had no idea how we were going to remember where to go.

Thankfully, a couple of friendly marshalls were on hand to teach us a few tricks to help us remember the manoeuvres. The tricks worked for Tony – who managed to get through a couple of clean runs, posting a best time of 2 minutes 51 seconds, shaving 8 seconds off his first run. I didn’t have quite so much joy, failing to post a time at all – after messing up the course during both attempts. Regardless, we both had a cracking day. In fact, Tony said he doesn’t remember having that much fun on a motorcycle for a long time. And I’m with him; it’s amazing what a buzz you can get after two minutes of riding around cones. I’d encourage anyone to give Moto Gymkhana a go.