FOCUS ON WOODVILLE
FOR MOTOCROSS GP TITLES
T
Words/photos: Andy McGechan, bikesportnz.com
he population of the small Tararua town of
Woodville will more than double for one
special weekend at the end of January.
New Zealand’s elite motocross racers
will again flood into the town for the
annual Honda New Zealand Motocross
Grand Prix, with more than 700 riders, along with
their crews, families and supporters, expected to
arrive for the two-day event on January 27-28.
Now in its 57th year, the annual Honda-sponsored
event at Woodville is obviously a very strong magnet
for the nation’s dirt biking elite and it is the biggest
event on the Kiwi motocross calendar for many
reasons. In addition to offering GP titles across
several different bike categories and attracting the
cream of talent from New Zealand, as well as many
leading riders from overseas, the stand-alone event
caters for entrants from as young as four years old,
to senior men and women in their 40s and 50s.
While plenty of international visitors have won
the event in the past, it is worth noting that Kiwi
riders are world class too and it is home-grown
talent that has tended to dominate at Woodville
over the years. There have been 30 different
overall winners at Woodville over the past 56
years, but only 12 riders have won there more
than once since the inaugural event in 1961.
The most prolific winner has been New Plymouth’s
Shayne King, with nine Woodville wins to his
credit, and his last winning appearance there
before retiring was at the 2006 event. King’s two
young boys, Curtis and Rian, will be lining up in
the junior races at this year’s Woodville event.
Current national MX1 champion Cody Cooper
(Honda) is a two-time former winner at Woodville
– the top man there in 2007 and again in 2014 –
and the 34-year-old would like nothing better than
to win it again and join the select group of just
five riders so far who have won it three times or
more – and those persons are Taranaki brothers
Shayne and Darryll King (Darryll a 5-time winner),
Motueka’s Josh Coppins (5-time winner), Tauranga’s
Peter Ploen (3) and Pahiatua’s Ken Cleghorn (3).
Cody Cooper