Motorbike riders Ted Collins and Tayla Relph have been overwhelmed by the response to their idea of having motorcycle road race training at Warrnambool Kart Club's Lake Gillear track.
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The first South West Track Days session on Wednesday night is a sell-out but there's more to come with training on each Wednesday 4-8pm until Christmas. The program will run beyond then.
Collins, a 2017 Australian Supersport 600cc champion, and Relph, a former Australian Supersport 300cc front runner, can't wait to pass on their knowledge.
Collins said it was common for motorcyclists to use go kart tracks for training.
"Every road racer/superbike rider in the world basically uses go kart tracks on small-capacity bikes for training because it's so expensive and so hard to take your race bike to a proper track every week," he said.
Once the idea starting gathering momentum they recognised there was high demand.
"We realised there's a big market for other people that may want to ride not for just training for racing, but just for learning how to ride a road bike on a track or make the transition from a dirt bike to a road bike," he said.
"So it was pretty exciting to think that we could transfer our knowledge to other people and be able to do that as well as just general training and bike time for ourselves."
Collins explained motorbike road tracks were few and far between.
"Our closest track is Mac Park in Mount Gambier so that's still two and a half hours away," he said.
"And it's a great track, but it's still not a national race track.
"The closest track for us on the national calendar would be Winton near Benalla which is 500ks away. So it's a huge bonus to be able to go riding here during the week."
Relph explained the pair had eased into the program so everything was set up properly.
"We've had a few trial runs over the past month just running them on Wednesdays with a few people that we know," she said.
"Once we got all of our procedures in place, we started marketing it to the wider region.
"We've managed to sell out our very first Wednesday that's open to the public."
She said she and Collins were surprised there were so many people interested.
"We didn't realise just how many people here in Warrnambool were bike enthusiasts, road bike enthusiasts or actually had motorbikes sitting in their shed but they've never been able to go out onto a track and use it," she said.
Relph explained they have KTM 390cc Dukes bikes for people to hire.
"We got them so it could be open to all experience levels," she said.
"This isn't something that's ever been done here in Warrnambool and Ted and I have been basically working our butts off for the past six months to purchase the hire bikes."
She praised the Collins family and others who have helped make the project happen.
"There's a lot of people behind the scenes who have helped make it happen and get the hires bikes up and running, we've got a local company on board which is helping with all the crash protection on the bikes as well.
"The community is really getting on board with it which is a really cool aspect."
Collins said the Warrnambool Kart Club had been great to deal with.
"They're actually pretty excited for the whole thing. And they're also really excited to get more people knowing this track is here and we do have such a good facility in Warrnambool because I think a lot of people probably don't even know it's here.
"So just with our little thing that we're doing out here, it might get a bit more exposure for them as well."
Relph said safety was paramount.
"We've got pretty strict policies in place that we've made alongside Warrnambool go kart club. So they're all on board and know exactly what bikes are going on the track," she said.
"At the end of the day, we're not here to break records or anything like that. We're here for training. We're here for coaching, and we're here to get people into the sport."
All levels of experience are welcome and bookings are essential.
"What we would probably do, moving forward once we get numbers of people who want to come, we might start having beginner nights and then more advanced nights," Collins said.
"So we could cater more for the people that have never done it before and need to learn the basics."