…or, why don’t they just stop TALKING about it and do something?
The last motorcycle race meeting to be held at the famous Mount Panorama Circuit was the “Bikes are Back at Bathurst Easter Carnival” Anyone want to guess when that was? What’s that, the little boy up the back? Yes, sonny, that’s right, it was in 2000, over TEN YEARS AGO. Apart from the usual stunt bike shows at the V8 race, the mountain hasn’t heard a bike being used in anger since Kevin Curtin blitzed all and sundry on that fabulous weekend ten years ago.
That’s not to say that there hasn’t been TALK about bringing the bikes back. In fact, if it wasn’t for the demise of Event Management Specialists, the company that promoted the event in 2000, it could have been repeated many times since. But the dishonesty and lack of integrity shown by the TV company who promised live television coverage right up to the last minute and then reneged on the deal, meant that EMS went to the wall and any other promoter who would have liked to have kept bike racing going at the Mountain was suitably “warned off” by the 2000 disaster.
Yes, there’s been plenty of talk, as even at the time, experienced “A” Grade riders said that the track was really too dangerous for bikes in its present, car-friendly guise. Different, shorter track layouts have been suggested, using the iconic parts of the existing track but creating a newer shorter layout that would have been more bike-friendly, and also spectator-friendly, as well.
God knows we NEED a new track in NSW. And, it seems the interest is still there, as this article in the Western Advocate, the local Bathurst newspaper suggests.
BUT, the same newspaper, just two days earlier, published this article which suggested the project was doomed.
What the hell? Everyone knows we need a new circuit; everyone knows that the almighty green lobby will never allow it to be built anywhere in the Sydney basin, so why not stop talking, stop wasting millions on “feasibility studies” and just build the freakin’ thing? I happen to know for a fact that the world’s best circuit designer, Bob Barnard, is very interested in working with the local authorities to make it happen, but, as far as I know, he hasn’t even been ASKED for his input!!
Someone needs to start kicking some backsides and provoking some ACTION, otherwise motorcycle road racing in NSW is going to DIE. Already promoters and clubs, fed up with the autocratic monopoly that one man has over the two existing NSW circuits, are moving their events to Victoria while NSW road racing is withering on the vine.
“If you build it, they will come.” was the mantra of the movie. They’re already HERE, JUST BUILD THE DAMN THING.
