"I'm sooooooo flat out at the moment, I reckon I've only got time for one or two rounds this year: MounTurner and Brookton. I'd love to win Brookton. That property is epic."
Few people could juxtapose the sentence: "Got no time to ride" with "love to get the win".
But there are few people in the scene quite like Trials and Enduro Skills legend and W.A. Hard Enduro Series Round 3 winner Neil Price!
Though he didn't quite get up on Jakob Petrig at MounTurner in June, Neil seemed to just flow like lava through the boulders of Brookton, executing a flawless ride in the Savage Motorcycles Brookton Boulder Bash.
The victory didn't come easy though.
From Savage rider Jakob Petrig who came across the line a close second "Neither of us really wanted to be ahead of the other. When I was chasing him, he just didn't make any mistakes, which made it very hard to keep up. Lap traffic got the best of me as Neil played some smart defence and I lost him over the hill"
It was four hours of hard riding as the front runners in all classes had to pick their way through a total of 79 riders, all out on the track at the same time, many with little clue about what they were doing and a few with no clue on how best to get it done.
And the terrain took it's toll. In the pits Neil was telling me how he was riding "hands turned in" on the bars to take the pressure off the blisters forming. The fluid leaking from his blisters was compromising his grip for the bigger obstacles.
The Brookton Boulder Bash has been a long time coming for WHES. The property sits on 350 acres of granite torrs less than an hour and half from Perth. It's a track that has been on the cards for some time, but drainage issues that compromise access have kept the club on the wrong side of the gates for the last two years.
Not this year! This year the conditions could not have been better. Beyond the huge field of riders, there were more spectators than you could poke a swing arm protector at (BTW....if anyone found mine out there can I please have it back).
A stack of rain leading up to the event meant that, where the sun was shining and the boulders were dry, the granite just gave and gave traction. Clearly this was the case as the Twist Pig spent a good deal of the day with the rubber wrong way up and it went home, as anticipated, with a cracked subframe.
Though the antics at the front of the pack were Gold Class, the real silver lining emerged one category back in the pack.
The "Mullet on a Mosquito" (Elliot Clenton) is, without a doubt, one of the most affable punters in the paddock. Always ready to jump in and help any rider in any situation on any issue at any time, Elliot has never really made a song and dance about podium placings. He has just ridden and ridden and, as a result, he has just gotten better and better.
It's only three rounds into the series and Elliot has gone straight to the top step in 2024! What makes his win more remarkable is that in 6 years of racing, placing between 4th and 10th, he has never before stepped off the turf.
Elliot sucked the life out of Brookton putting in 5 hard laps on the KTM 85.
Brookton was such an amazing track that few riders wanted to concede unless they really had to: unless their bodies or bike were completely broken.
Matt Stone was "clutching at straws" quite literally when he even tried to parasite his car heater hoses to bodge up some radiator pipes to keep his bike in the event. Buddy Brock Johnson poached bits and pieces off his own bike to try and keep Matt in the race, but it was to no avail.
All I can say about Brookton is this: in the midst of a track as brilliant as Brookton there are simply no concessions for the chaos.
In a trackside pow wow with Bronze winner Jordan Haworth I said words to the effect of "There are just no excuses out here! You just have to just keep going"
He sucked in a lung of oxygen and said "I know mate, I know. I'm on my fifth lap and I am wrecked."
I smiled............ I was only halfway through my second lap, and I was proud of that.
Thanks to WHES, thanks to the riders and a very special thanks to the property owners that let us live the dream.
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