RYAN HUGHES PASSES ON SKILLS

He came, he saw, he conquered … the hearts and minds of Kiwi youth.

United States motocross legend Ryan ‘Ryno’ Hughes arrived in New Zealand for the first time earlier this year, to conduct training sessions near Morrinsville with aspiring Kiwi youth, and he returned this month to carry on the good work, this time in Taranaki.

Riders (and a few parents too) hung on every word as Hughes put a dozen or so Kiwi rising stars of the sport through their paces at the Barrett Road Motorcycle Park facility, on the outskirts of New Plymouth, this week.

Even now at age 41, he’s as fit as he ever was in his prime, thanks to his discipline for exercise at his Rynoland Training Facility in Temelcula, California, where he trains and produces some of the best riders in the world, and also because of the health supplements that he markets worldwide, brands we now know as Ryno Power Supplements.

Hughes raced professional motocross since 1988 and, before that, he also had a very impressive amateur career.

There have certainly been a few benchmark moments along the way – in 1990, Hughes had 10 amateur titles to his name and, in his first national motocross race in the United States, he finished an impressive fifth.

Hughes turned professional at age 15 and enjoyed a 19-year reign as a top-10 racer, competing in many different types of motorcycling events. He has raced with success at the top level in supercross, motocross, the FIM world championships, world championship supercross, enduro-cross, supermoto, Grand National Cross-country Championships (GNCC), WORCS cross-country races, the US Open of Supercross and on three occasions he was a Team USA representative at the Motocross of Nations, the “Olympic Games of Motocross”.

He was on the US team that won the 2000 Motocross of Nations at St Jean d’Angely, in France (with equally-famous riders Ricky Carmichael and Travis Pastrana as his team-mates).

He was a member of the US team that finished runner-up at the Motocross of Nations at Sverepec, in Slovakia, in 1995 (with Steve Lamson and Jeff Emig as team-mates) and was again part of a runner-up result by Team USA, in Zolder, in Belgium, in 2003 (with Ricky Carmichael and Tim Ferry as his team-mates).

Hughes also spent a year in Europe racing the Motocross Grand Prix scene, finishing fourth overall in the 250cc class in 1999, behind Frenchman Frédéric Bolley, Germany’s Pit Beirer and French rider David Vuillemin.

What better person could these young New Zealand riders have to teach them the skills of the sport and he vows to return to this country … “but probably in the summer, when it’s not so cold.”

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