Huntly was the venue for round two and after taking the win at round one I was keen to get another good result but it wasn't to be.

I didn't get the best of starts and found myself buried in the pack, as per usual I got on the move towards the front but unfortunately disaster struck on lap 3 when I hit a tree root at a bad angle and promptly had a nasty crash leaving my bike & handlebars bent and the wind knocked out of myself.

At this point I thought my race was over, but I came right, got myself back to the pits again to straighten some parts on the bike and got back into it.

Upon leaving the pits I was informed I was in 30th position, so I figured getting back up into a points paying position was going to be the goal for the day.

Part way into my 5th or 6th lap I came across a fallen rider who wasn't moving and no one had stopped yet even the riders directly in front of me kept going, so I made a quick & easy decision to pull off the track and see if he was alright.

The rider was Michael Vining (one of my main competitors) and he was glad to see me as no one had stopped yet and he'd been laying there for a while. he was in a lot of pain & struggling with his breathing, he told me to inform the track marshals, so I got on my way again and informed a marshal further on up the track that a rider was down and hurt further back on the track.

The following lap I was glad to see the marshals had come to his aid and a lap after that the helicopter had arrived to take Michael to the hospital (later I was informed Michael had broken his back, but after a successful surgery his now recovering).

As for my race I made good progress and made it up to 7th position by the finish of the 3hr race and managed to set the quickest lap of the day on my final lap, so even though the result wasn't what I needed I was still reasonably pleased with my efforts. Now I heard that some had criticized my actions of stopping mid race considering I'm the defending champion who's in a position to defend his title, all I can say is I'm disgusted to hear that and I'm also not impressed with my fellow riders who just rode on past Michael before me.

Yes I may have the number 1 on my bike and have a lot of sponsors and friends backing me to do the best I can but at the end of the day its just a race and rider safety comes first! In my book anyway. Maybe my actions came from the fact that I've been in Michael's position many times before and can understand just how frightening it can be when your down, hurt and in the middle of nowhere. 

This event was held last weekend up in Whangamata, conditions where slippery and really tight and I honestly didn't ride well at all, I felt the 450cc machine was just a little to much for me in the conditions and the results reflected that with the top 6 riders all riding smaller machines.

I pushed hard all day and kept all my mistakes to a minimum but in the end finished up in 8th position, certainly not what I was after but I did manage to win the 450cc class for the day and I later found out that I've also taken over the overall series lead, so it turns out my results which I don't personally consider to be all that consistent are obviously more consistent than my competitors and that is why I'm now leading the National series outright. So with the next round of the enduro's in a few weeks time I just need to fit in some good training and hopefully then I can string together some good results.