This past weekend, the Grand Forks BMX club hosted the Provincial BMX Championship.
While the provincial was on Sunday, the race events went on all weekend.
In the big wheels moto class, Zaylen Romaine from Grand Forks took first. Lyndon Schiewe, who comes from Salmo but trains in Grand Forks, took first in the 41-45 cruiser class. Brennan Zorn, Lindon Webster-Krist and Gavin Redding each took second in their respected classes of 5 & under novice, 6 novice and seven novice.
In 8 novice, Nickolie Horkoff took second, while Lucas Wodyga took third.
Dave Carlyle, president of the Grand Forks BMX Society said that this is the club’s biggest race of the year.
“It’s the last in the series of provincial championship races, so we brought over a lot of racers from the Okanagan and the coast,” Carlyle said. “We ran 26 motos in our championship race, times an average of six racers (per moto) so there was probably 150 racers and their families.”
Carlyle said that those people fill the campground in City Park, as well as other motels and hotels and restaurants and so brings a lot of revenue to the community.
“That’s one of the contributions we feel we make. We do this for the kids so what we’re doing is giving kids in this community an opportunity to take part in what we think is a great sport, because it introduces kids to bicycles and bike safety,” he said. “It’s a very cardiovascular sport, they get a tremendous workout and it’s a full Olympic sport, raced in over a hundred countries in the world.”
Carlyle said that since BMX is a sport popular worldwide, kids can go as far as they want with it.
He said it’s fun and safe. It’s also fast, so kids build a lot of good reaction time.
“What they build too is self-confidence, skills that’ll carry them through life, as far as social skills – learning to be a good loser and winner. There’s a lot going on here. It’s an individual sport. Kids have a lot of team sport opportunities, not a lot of individual sport opportunities.
Carlyle said the city’s been gracious in giving them the track space, which he said is in a prime location.
“This is why people come from far and wide, they say this is the best track in the province, out of 16 sanctioned tracks, riders and parents virtually all agree,” he said.
“You go to the other tracks, they’re shorter, tighter; they’re squeezed into much tighter spaces. They’re often far out of town, far from services, far from campgrounds, far from a river. We’ve got all those things close at hand that make this a real destination for a lot of racers.”
Carlyle said that they thank the city, Emcon and their sponsors for helping to make the event possible.