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What A Difference A Year Makes
Motorcycling New Zealand has announced its team to contest the Motocross of Nations on October 2 and 3 in Leirop, Netherlands.
The team is
The top three riders were also named last year, but in very different circumstances. Both Townley and Coppins were coming back from serious crashes, Townley was forced to sit out half of last years GPs. Hurley never got on the MX of Nations grid at all because of a serious foot injury that needed surgery. In the event, Shayne King stepped into the breach to replace Hurley in a Kiwi team that was one place outside of the medals.
Moving forward a year, Ben Townley has a 94 point lead in the MX2 World Championship and Coppins, who first did the des Nations in 1993, is third in the MX1 World Championship. Hurley, who jets home from the USA this week to contest the SsangYong NZ Motocross Championship, won the first round of the FIM World Supercross Championship in Seville, Spain, at the end of 2003.
Cody Cooper, the non traveling reserve, has the “Swiss army knife” role; he may have to step into stellar shoes and in any class. His personal inventory includes the current Oceania and NZ 125 Championships and his “work in progress” is a good point’s lead in the Australian 125 Championship.
New Zealand were truant from the Teams World Championship in 2002, but a third in 2001(a team that included Coppins and Hurley) and a fourth in 2003 (Coppins, Townley and S. King) indicate that we are a threat to take the championship outside of Europe or the USA for the first time in its 57 year history, which could add some piquant in the FIM's centenary year.
Our riders all have big “to do lists’ before the MX of Nations in nine weeks. The event is organised as the year’s finale, one week after the last GP in South Africa(Coppins and Townley), three weeks after the last nationals in the USA(Hurley) and three quarters of the way through our domestic championship(Cooper and Hurley).
Ben Townley is from Taupo, Josh Coppins hails from Motueka, Daryl Hurley calls Hawera home and Cody Cooper is a Bay of Plenty native.
Team Manager, Mike McLeod (Wellington) is in charge for the second successive year.
Youthstream, the worldwide promoters of the MX of Nations have organised TV coverage to an estimated 940,000,000 people around the world.
