The unthinkable happened at Taikorea, just outside Palmerston North, on Saturday – a rider who now describes himself as semi-retired, with no build-up events under his wheels in recent months, showed up with last year’s technology and won the event for a second time.

Marton sheep and beef farmer Cam Smith won the inaugural Yamaha Taikorea 500 off-road challenge last year and he repeated the feat on Saturday, riding exactly the same 2013-model Yamaha YZ450F bike he had used 12 months previously.

It certainly raised eyebrows because the popularity of the event has grown since last year’s inaugural running, Saturday’s event attracting many of the cream of New Zealand’s off-road riders, current and former national champions among them, and so it was always going to be harder for Smith to win it a second time around.

The Yamaha Taikorea 500 is the brainchild of Kiwi international and former American off-road champion Paul Whibley, home for a break over Christmas and offering up his own private practice track near Himatangi as the venue.

The sand-track event features a novel format – two one-hour cross-country endurance races followed by two 10-minute endurocross sprints – each of the four races offering $100 to the winner and points also accumulated towards finding an outright winner. So, instead of everything riding on one two or three-hour race, as usually happens at cross-country events, the competitors had four chances to win … and the opportunity to make up for mistakes made in the earlier races.

Smith won the day’s opening one-hour race, the 37-year-old sending a clear message that, even though an infrequent racer these days, he was determined to defend his 2012 Yamaha Taikorea 500 crown.

Smith finished comfortably ahead of enduro expert Callan May, of Auckland, with Taupo motocross hero Brad Groombridge claiming third spot.

Groombridge won the second one-hour race, finishing ahead of May and former national enduro champion Jason Davis, of Whangamata, while Smith was forced to settle for fifth position, just behind seven-time and current national moto trials champion Jake Whitaker, of Wellington.

At this halfway stage in the competition, Groombridge held the advantage, his 3-1 results marginally better than Smith’s 1-5 results, but the worst was yet to come, the endurocross phase, on a course that resembled a BMX track on steroids, with logs and tractor tyres thrown in to make things really interesting.

Smith won the first of two endurocross sprints, finishing ahead of Whitaker, Groombridge, Davis and May, and so it came down to the final race to decide the outright honours.

Disaster struck for Smith at the start of race four, the second endurocross sprint, and an altercation with a tractor tyre left him at the back of the field.

Calmly, Smith set about hunting down Groombridge, eventually catching his main rival and forcing his way past at about the halfway stage. When Groombridge made a mistake of his own a minute later, Smith was able to open a gap, eventually finishing the race third, behind Whitaker and Davis, with Eketahuna’s Jacob Hyslop claiming fourth and Groombridge crossing the line in fifth.

This made it 1-5-1-3 for Smith (Sargent Yamaha YZ450F), worth 87 points, and 3-1-3-5 for Groombridge (Action Moto Suzuki RM-Z450), worth 82 points.

Third overall was Davis (KTM 300 XC), his 4-3-4-2 results earning him 78 points, while May (Kiwi Rider BikesportNZ.com YZ250F) was fourth, his 2-2-5-6 results earning him 75 points. Whitaker (Husaberg FE250) rounded out the top five with 9-7-2-1 results, giving him 73 points.

“I was pretty happy to be out front in the first race of the day … no dust to deal with,” said Smith afterwards. “It wasn’t quite like that for race two, though, because I crashed in turn one and had to choke on a lot of powder before I could get back to a reasonable position. I wasn’t going to give up though. I relaxed near the end of that second race to conserve some energy for the sprint races that were coming up.

“I knew the sprints would be hard and they were. They were only 10 minutes long but they were harder than the one-hour races.

“I came here with the idea of winning. I had been doing a bit of training ahead of today. I’ve only done two races since I was here last year, so although my fitness was good, I hadn’t had much race time.

“It is good to come here and beat somebody of Brad Groombridge’s calibre, and to beat riders such as Jake Whitaker and national cross-country champion Adrian Smith (from Mokau) too.”

It was double glory for Marton, too, with 16-year-old Rangitikei College pupil Ethan Breuer (Honda CRF250) winning the 45-minute junior cross-country race earlier in the day. He finished one minute and 39 seconds ahead of Eketahuna’s Charlie Richardson, with Marton’s Josh Pilet taking third spot.

© Words and photo by Andy McGechan, www.BikesportNZ.com