New Zealand off-road racers Paul Whibley and Rory Mead will have to wait just a little bit longer before they can go head-to-head in the Grand National Cross-country Championships in the United States.

The weekend’s sixth round of 13 in the big American series, the Indy 110 at Gosport, Indiana, was cancelled because of flooding, the second time this season that weather has prevented a GNCC race from happening.

Whibley (Yamaha YZ450F) is a former GNCC champion and running third overall in this year’s competition, while Mead is a first-timer in the series in America, although a very experienced international rider with major scalps to his credit.

Mead (Yamaha YZ450F) is a former New Zealand enduro champion and also leading this year’s championship. He is riding selected GNCC events while the New Zealand series has a mid-winter break.

Mead is expected back in New Zealand for the fifth round of six in the domestic series, at Riverhead Forest, near Auckland, on June 5.

In the weeks leading up to the weekend’s race, both the Kiwi Yamaha men have been in impressive form and a showdown between the two friends was widely anticipated.

The deluge began during Saturday’s racing and continued throughout the night to create some of the most unfavourable conditions, even by cross-country standards. Public safety is the number one concern of the organisers, and, after consulting with local public safety officials, the decision became clear to cancel the event for the day.

“I’ve been a racer for 22 years and I’ve seen a lot of bad stuff, but this would probably rank in the top three worst races I’ve seen,” said eight-time GNCC champion Barry Hawk, who also set out the Indy 100 course.

“It would have been easy for us to say after the ATVs that we couldn’t do it, but we didn’t. We went out there and did everything we could to salvage a course. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when the creek crossing became impassable, taking out over half the track that we had laid out,” Hawk added.

GNCC racers take pride in completing obstacles that may consist of mud, water, rocks, hill-climbs and other extreme challenges along the way. However, once those obstacles become engulfed with water, they become dangerous for racers of all skill levels. Had a rider needed medical assistance, it would have been impossible for the medical crew to reach the injured rider in the muddy conditions and the ambulance to leave the facility.

This event is tentatively being rescheduled.

Meanwhile, the next round is set for Altoona, Pennsylvania on May 29.

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