British Lion

Published: 17th October 2006

Author: Words by Billy MacKenzie Photo by Anthony McSutton

Billy does his bit for Queen and Country at the Motocross des Nations

Hello again people! Well, I think there is really only one place to start and that is the des Nations! Let me be first to share my opinions and I'm sure that most of you will agree that it was an awesome event! So I'd like to firstly congratulate Martin Mansbridge and Steve Dixon for their efforts and for doing a great job organising the whole thing! Good work!
Of course, we can't forget JDH (Jonny Hamilton) for doing a great job on the track and maintaining it throughout all the downpours of rain we had! Not to forget anyone else who was involved. Well done!
As for my weekend, I will start with my qualifying race. As the first British rider out to race I felt the need to be a leader and I wanted to do the best I could to give myself, Carl and Tommy confidence to show that we were more than capable of a top three finish overall.
Anyways, I got a decent start and just put my head down and concentrated on my lap times as well as enjoying the power of the 450. I had a little bit of difficulty mid race with arm-pump which allowed Coppins to close on me but I fought through it to pull off a third place finish which I was delighted with as I knew that's where I should be!
My Saturday work was done so I cleaned up and watched Tommy have a good ride with a strong finish and Carl too had a good ride on board the 450 to give us a good qualifying position. It was now time to chill out for the night and be relaxed for the next day.
So after some top notch mince and tatties with gluten-free gravy cooked up by my brother Stevie we decided to meet up with the Stokoe brothers as well as the rest of their Geordie mates. We found ourselves in stitches of laughter watching them ask all the girls to "get yer feet oot for the lads" which for all of you that don't understand means "get your feet out for the boys". The funniest bit about it was just the sheer look of confusion on the girl's faces! However, they were successful a few times and gave the ladies a beautiful compliment which went a little something like "phwoar, you've got a cracking pair of toes"! Ha ha! We then flooded onto the dodgems where we pretty much abused each other for a whole three minutes or something! But bedtime had arrived so I headed back to the camper to rest and prepare myself for the big races the next day.
I'll cut to the chase. The first race on the Sunday was going really well, I was really enjoying myself on the 450 and felt I was riding well. Not to forget soaking up all the noise that was being made by the British fans - you guys never fail to produce a serious amount of noise (not to forget all the fist pumping and flag waving)! You just don't realise how much of a boost it gives a rider inside. Especially me! It's awesome! Unfortunately, I made a few mistakes which slipped me further down the order but I did my best and it made me hungrier for my second moto of the day.
I was determined to come out swinging this race and when I launched out the gate in second place behind Philippaerts the red, white and blue mist set in *wink, wink* and all I could think about was winning! I pushed hard for the lead and when I eventually got it I heard all the fans go crazy which gave me the biggest buzz inside imaginable. Philippaerts was riding well and got me back a couple of corners later but I was not for letting this one go so went on the charge again to eventually get back past and lead for a little while.
The crowd noise this time was unreal! The hairs on the back of my neck stood up on end! However, David was just as hungry for the win as I was and made another move on me where we made a little contact and I bobbled which allowed Everts and Bubba by me. I pushed hard again to rejoin the front runners but arm-pump was not allowing me to push as hard as I wanted. So in the end although I know I was capable of better I had to settle for a result. That's life and I'll just have to try harder next year!
All in all, I'm glad I gave you something to cheer for and I hope I did enough to make your weekend worthwhile! To summarize my weekend, I had a lot of fun riding the big bike again and I know with enough practice I'll get rid of the silly little mistakes and get good results in MX1 next year! It's now going to be good to enjoy some time off for a short while after a long season so I'm looking forward to that!