I
magine, if you can, that you are sitting on your
couch at home, celebrating your 31st birthday,
and then you’re told “hey man, you’ve just been
declared national champion”?
That’s what happened to Whanganui’s Richie
Dibben on Wednesday, April 8, 2020.
It had been a case of “hurry up and wait” for the
nation’s elite motorcycle riders during the hiatus
after the early rounds of the 2020 New Zealand
Superbike Championships, points in the bag from
racing at Ruapuna and Levels in January and
Hampton Downs on March 7-8, and all the riders
were eager to resume the battle at Manfeild and
then head on to Taupo.
But then they were told they should expect
some changes to the race calendar.
A frightening worldwide medical emergency
was looming on the horizon – the Coronavirus
COVID-19 virus – and nobody at that stage knew
just how serious this might be, the massive impact
it would have or what steps were going to be
taken to combat it.
Three of five rounds of the 2020 NZSBK
championships had been run before the virus
pandemic forced the final two rounds of the series
to be postponed, everyone talking about May or
June, July or August, or possibly even September
or October, before the bikes could be restarted.
A nationwide lock-down was then imposed
on the population on March 25, just three
days before the NZSBK championship racing
had been due to resume at Manfeild. The
competitors continued their training regimes
as best they could behind closed doors, most
of them anticipating a resumption of the series
later in the year. But an announcement went out
via email and social media on April 8 to inform
riders that the series had “been called”.
KIWI RIDER 25