The FIM Long Track World Championship Challenge takes place this coming Saturday (24 June) at La Réole in the south-west of France.
Located around seventy kilometres south-east of Bordeaux and close to Marmande which will host the third of this season’s FIM Long Track World Championship Finals next month, the La Réole oval is seven-hundred-and-sixty metres long with a mixed dirt and grass surface.
The top five riders from the event will join the top six finishers from this year’s FIM Long Track World Championship as permanent competitors in the 2024 series along with three wild card riders chosen by the FIM.
With nine riders out of Saturday’s twenty-two-rider entry list already contesting the 2023 FIM Long Track World Championship, the Challenge can be regarded in two ways – as a direct route into the sport’s elite or as a back-up plan for this year’s championship competitors in case they finish the season lower than sixth.
Starting among the favourites on Saturday night will be forty-four-year-old Josef Franc who is currently part of a three-way tie for the lead in this season’s FIM Long Track World Championship. The Czech rider won the opening Final of 2023 at Herxheim in May, but narrowly missed out at the second Final in Ostrów in Poland earlier this month when he finished third in the Last Chance Heat.
Britain’s Chris ‘Bomber’ Harris, who topped the podium in Ostrów, will also be in action in La Réole as will Kenneth Kruse Hansen from Denmark who was third in Ostrów and the Czech Republic’s Hynek Stichauer who missed the Polish podium by one position.
A rider looking to make his mark and book his place in the main 2024 championship will be France’s Mathias Trésarrieu. At twenty years old he is in the very early stages of his Long Track career, though he has some extremely strong family role models – his father Stéphane was runner-up in the 2009 World Championship and his uncle Mathieu is the reigning FIM World Long Track Champion, although he is not defending his title this year.
Racing will get under way at 20:30 CET and all the action from La Réole will be available as a Pay-Per-View broadcast via a livestream package on the Tapes Up TV channel.