It is less than two weeks now until the “greatest show on turf” – the biggest dirt bike race in the Southern Hemisphere – the annual New Zealand Motocross Grand Prix at Woodville.

And this year’s 63rd running of the big Honda-sponsored event, on the weekend of January 24-25, is set to be another massive “superstar showdown”.

The event skipped two years (in 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then it was rained out in 2023), otherwise this year’s event would actually be the 65th anniversary.

Several overseas riders, mostly from Japan and Australia, have already signed up to race at Woodville this year, and they’ll have high hopes of taking away the main silverware in their carry-on luggage when they leave.

Hoever, even with a talented batch of international riders flying in, last season’s Woodville winner, Mangakino’s Maximus Purvis, and fellow Kiwi international Josiah Natzke, from Huntly, remain the clear favourites to win the main prize.

Woodville is one of the biggest events on the Kiwi calendar and it will be another great showdown between Purvis and Natzke. They are already locked in battle at the head of the field in the 2025-26 New Zealand Motocross Championships, now at the halfway stage and set to resume with the third round of four next month.

Since the standalone Honda New Zealand Motocross Grand Prix at Woodville was first staged more than half a century ago, in 1961, the two-day motocross extravaganza has grown to become the jewel in crown for dirt bike racing in New Zealand and hundreds of riders will battle over the weekend, including minis, juniors, seniors, women and veterans.

The long and illustrious list of previous winners includes Shayne King, the New Plymouth man who was the 1996 500cc motocross world champion, Britain’s Greg Hanson, top Australians Kirk Gibbs and Dean Ferris, American Willie Surratt and Sweden’s Gunnar Lindstrom, to name just a few.

To date there have only been 13 multiple (two wins or more) champions at Woodville – Shayne King holding the incredible record as a nine-time senior champion there (between 1992 and 2006).

Only one of these multi-time Woodville GP champions are expected to line up to race again in 2026, Pāpāmoa’s Cody Cooper.

However, if Purvis wins again this time around, it will be his second overall victory at Woodville and if Natzke wins, it will be his first.

Host Manawatu-Orion Motorcycle Club president Brad Ritchie said it was “an honour to continue the legacy of top-calibre motocross in New Zealand”, with the Woodville event being the first significant such competition ever held in this country and, as always, being staged on the same plot of farmland that hosted the inaugural running in 1961.

“We want to again say a big thanks to our sponsors, particularly Blue Wing Honda, and we enjoy working alongside the landowner, the Tararua District Council and the local community to bring this event to life.

“The event really does have an international Grand Prix feel about it. The Woodville motocross is a very special occasion for everyone. It always starts the year off with a bang.”

Ritchie said that the rolling grassland property, at the eastern end of the old Manawatu Gorge, “looks as good as it ever has”.

“It has been a relatively mild winter, and the venue has not suffered any serious flooding. It has been favourable in helping us prepare a top-level race circuit.”

Sadly, the former world championship Grand Prix motocross rider who founded the event in 1961, Palmerston North’s Tim Gibbes, passed away in October 2023, although his legacy does live on.

The senior feature race prize has been renamed the Tim Gibbes Memorial Trophy and is still the most coveted piece of silverware on offer to the Kiwi motocross racing community.

– By Andy McGechan, www.BikesportNZ.com