The Iron Horse Arena Cross event held at the Rimbey Co-operators Agrim Centre was a huge hit with about 1,300 people coming out each day over the two weekends of Feb. 4 and 5 and Feb. 11 and 12.
“We’ve never in the history of our building had that size of crowd and not two nights in a row, so this motorcross has been a major opportunity for us,” said Office Manager of the Rimbey Ag Society Jill Moore about the first weekend of the event.
Moore said there’s only been a couple motorcross events run in the province, so it was a huge opportunity for Rimbey to have people come out from all over.
There were riders from all across the province, B.C., Saskatchewan and even as far as the United States.
Moore said one of the big highlights for them was running an event that was out of their element and delivering it so well, along with the group putting it on.
“I think just working with such a great group and being out of our element, it’s just been pretty mind-blowing,” said Moore.
Todd McBride, who is one of the organizers of the event with his friend Les Nemeth, is a motorcross rider himself, along with his kids, who happened to compete in the event. The two men put the event on with the help of their wives, Linsey and Val, who helped with all of the registration for the event, making it a family affair.
The event had hundreds of riders come out to take part, with 195 riders alone competing the first weekend, with over 300 entries. There were even pros who came out to ride throughout both weekends.
“That is huge. Not many places get that big of entries,” said McBride.
The first night’s winner was Ryan Lockhart, an old retired pro from B.C., who won the Pro Amateur class. He also did a bunch of riding schools for the little kids.
“He’s a big part of the Future West (Moto) series in British Columbia, so he runs all the arenacross stuff in B.C., so we’ve been really reliant on him for a little bit of pointers and tips for how they run their series,” said McBride.
Spenser Wilton, another pro and well known off road racer, was the winner of the pro class on the second night, Feb. 5.
“Those two put a really cool show on,” said McBride.
In between the two weekends of the motocross event, were private track rentals, so people could come out to purchase an hour slot and bring up to 10 riders to ride the track and get comfortable on it before their competition.
“It’s been awesome, we’ve just had so much good feedback from the whole town and the ag society is just to the moon.”
