Oceanside BMX is back up and running with a brand new track.
This is the local club’s 13th season, and its refurbished track in Qualicum Beach made its’ big debut last Sunday when it hosted stop three on the ABA provincial race series.
“We’re really looking forward to it,” OBX president Trisha Grecht said heading into the long weekend.
“We just spent like 10 weeks completely redoing the whole track,” she confirmed, adding “we tore it all down and rebuilt it so its totally different that it used to be.”
Overseen by a small but dedicated core group of volunteers, the crew spent ‘a lot of hours every weekend out there, but it was worth it.”
Staying with the original configuration, the track now has different, wider, jumps, and all the soil has all been machine-screened.
“It is also now UCI (the governing body of all cycling) certified, so we could one day host nationals, but we need power to do that,” said Grecht, then made the point “it’s still a slightly downhill track, which is very unusual... there’s no other track like ours.”
Asked his take on how it went, Robert Grecht, the track operator said they had 130 riders from all over the Island and as far away as Kamloops and lots from Squamish turn out on Sunday and confirmed “the rebuild was very successful. All the kids loved it — lots of fun new obstackles, big jumps, good reviews from all the riders, of all ages.”
The provincial race series opened in Victoria on Saturday, moved to Nanaimo Sunday morning then Oceanside later that afternoon, and capped off the long weekend of racing in Cumberland on Monday.
“It was great — I think on average each of the (Island) races had about 200 riders turn out,” said Trisha, mother of three nationally ranked young riders who live and breath BMX.
OCEANSIDE RESULTS
OBMX had nine riders qualify for main events on their home track last Sunday.
Aiden Grecht grabbed 1st in both 9 Expert Class and Cruiser events. Ty Jordan and Jacob Sorg finished 6th and 9th respectively in 9 Expert; Tom Zanchettan finished 4th in 38 Expert; Alana Zanchetta earned 3rd in 13 Novice; Sam Jacobson was 4th in 10 Intermediate; Avery Swanson secured 2nd in 9 Intermediate; Alex Grecht reeled in 1st in 11 expert Class and 4th in Cruiser, and sister Alison was 1st in 13 Girls Class and 1st in Cruiser.