It was a very nice afternoon. Arif and I attended the first ever Bahrain Motocross Championship which was organised by the Bahrain Motorcycle Club at a dirt track off the Saudi Causeway highway.
I’m a bit too tired to go into details at the moment, but I’ll leave you with this selection of pictures I have taken between yesterday and this afternoon (total tally was something like 900 pictures! There is no way I’m going to upload them all, so I just chose what I considered the best, 19!)

I’ve also created a couple of groups on Flickr, one is Bahrain Motorsports and the other is Pitbabes and you’re all invited to contribute!
Comments
GREAT pix!
That camera of yours is GREAT! Great pix too … but that one guy shouldn’t be riding a motorcycle in his flip-flops!! NOT SAFE AT ALL! Yikes!
Grrr, a camera makes not a photographer!
Oh, please – don’t I know it! My X was a commercial photographer and I was reminded of it everyday. Mind you, he still went out and spent too much $$ on his [url=http://www.linhof.de/english/index.html]Linhof[/url]
Re: Grrr, a camera makes not a photographer!
welllll I guess if he’s making money out of it then all power to him. I’m not!
talking of which: who wants to buy a Nikon F3, a Bronica GS1, a Pentax 6×7?
let me know!
Re: GREAT pix!
Grrr, a camera makes not a photographer! 😉
That guy, Munthir Abdulla Yousif actually won first place at the first Motocross Championship. He did very well indeed.
I was there when his brother just arrived with his new dirt-bike from Kuwait via the Saudi Causeway direct to the venue as it was being set up. He couldn’t wait to try the bike up, so they fueled it and away he rode.
I don’t know much about motorbikes and this is the first event I ever go to. Now I’m hooked! It’s realy interesting and fun. Thankfully there weren’t any accidents and only one retirement due to mechanical failure.
The organisers did a very good job, and so did the marshals.
Motocross
Thanks for the great photos. we spent a lot of time putting that event together and it came off well considering it was our very first and most have never done such an event. it will only get better. Hope to see you out at our future events. I’ll try to keep you informed when they are coming up.
Rich #11
Re: Motocross
Yes please do Rich! I’d appreciate it very much. ANYTHING with petrol in it is my friend! 😉
Great job with the organisation and the event as a whole, it was an excellent afternoon spent well. As I said I have some 900 pictures of the event, I have whittledt those to about 225 or so which I still need to look through again. Once that is done, I don’t mind putting them on a CD to be included in the Bahrain Motorcycle Club’s website (is there such a thing?) or even used by the club.
I’ll gather all of your pictures, put them on a CD and deliver them to you. I’ll email you when ready.
Good to have a Texan motorhead in Bahrain who’s not afraid to get involved in local events!! (Steve, where are you? ;))
Re: Safety and Motorbikes
[b]The BMC does require personnel to wear the safety gear[/b]…….if you notice the pics of him riding with nothing on…………well, that was the day before the race when he was out practicing alone.
I personally wear just about everything i have except my knee braces which are a major hassle to put on and off and get used to riding with them and that’s about all that would stop a knee injury. boots, helmet, gloves and eye protection are a must….the chest protectors on the market don’t serve for much more than roost protection on the track and i can vouch that they definitely won’t stop a cracked or broken rib as i’ve done it wearing them. but i do agree that setting the wrong example in the eyes of the lesser experienced is not a good thing.
we will keep it as safe as we can and are trying to offer a safe environment for riders out there rather than the streets as we’ve all seen them riding on before.
… “if he’s making money”
If. If is right. He wasn’t. Ergo – X husband!
That didn’t come out right.
It wasn’t just the photography, believe me. 🙁
Money Issues
must’ve been the money then! (sorry couldn’t resist that window :))
onto other things:
my car is sick, and in the garage at the moment. The problem I had with it losing gear-changes was becuase of the gear change cable got dislocated off a ball-joint somewhere, thankfully at least I still had 3rd and 4th to drive it home. Now they tell me that it’s also suffering from an oil leak and the rear brakes need looking at. I told them to go ahead and fix everything (even though they’re threatening a bill of well over $1.5k!) because next weekend we have another open track day that I intend to get involved in.
Now it appears that someone is seriously interested in buying it off me!
Time to go look for that twin-turbo I’ve been promising myself for some time… either that or use the money for a down-payment on a Cayenne!
Re: GREAT pix!
The Bahrain Motorcycle Club should require all riders to wear helmets, chest protectors, elbow and knee armor and boots. It’s all fun until your buddy is lying on the ground dying from blunt force trauma to the head . /flame off
Here’s a fast and dirty list of friends of mine who were wearing partial sets of safety gear and were involved in motorcycle accidents:
1977: Torn knee ligament, he still rides but his knee hurts badly after a few hours of enduro riding
1980: Dead -riding a KZ-1000Z1R < no helmet>
1996: Torn elbow ligament , broken lower arm ( his elbow was the size of a large grapefuit)
1997: Me: Broken rib – trials riding < not wearing chest armor, but trials riders rarely do>
1997: Broken foot – trials riding < wearing trials boots>
1999: Severe eye injury from a rock thrown from a tire < goggles were around neck, not placed over eye's>
2002: Head on bike vs bike accident: one man had a compound fracture to the femur- yes his bone was sticking out of his skin and his arm was mangled. My buddy who was hit by that man was wearing full motox gear but the other mans helmet visor struck my friends face and broke his cheek bone and lacerated his face. -both bikes nearly destroyed- One man was airlifted from the remote mountain crash site.
Wear your g**damn safety gear
Craig
Northern California
Safety and Motorbikes
What you say is absolutely true. You can never be too safe. I wasn’t condoning the fact that the guy wasn’t wearing any protection (read: totally wrong clothes for motorbike riding, especially with loose clothing and no foot protection.) He chose to ride and he was very anxious to try out the new bike.
As he was doing that, Rich and another fellow took pains to wear their complete gear before they took their bikes out. Rich, like Munthir, just received his bike.
Munthir’s brothers (6 of them were there!) took it very lightly, and one of them was bragging about his brother doing even long wheelies on public roads!
You can leed a horse…
Stupid boys and their Toys
sob… sob…sob.
I have strong reservations against those bikes, especially those driven by those halfwits in Bahrain.
Yes, they do wheelies on highways and zigzag through heavy traffic and pester girls. It really is nerve-wrecking to drive on roads they frequent.
I try to avoid them like the plague. If a mob of motorcyclists is on a highway, I take the first turn off or slow down until they are gone.
I don’t want to see human carcasses on the road (yuck yuck yuck) – the cats we see everyday are more than enough.
A few years ago one of those morons lost control of his bike as he was trying to show off and he fell and it skid on him…right in front of me… disgusting scene..
We have had horrific accidents in Bahrain over the years, partly because the little boys take a lot of pride in their toys and want to continue showing off and also because there is no venue or activities for them to flex their muscles in a testosterone-charged environment.
Glad to see that the motocross was a success and hope they don’t show off their newly-acquired skills on the streets.
In bahrain they did alot of racing staff why they didnt do the atv races in bahrain?????
we like to join this races and we wait long time for this so plz somebody help to do atv races in bahrain……