The summer season went out with a bang last weekend with the annual Big Dog race, hosted at Barry’s Ultra Motorsports Park near Busby.
About 30 riders came out to take part in the day’s events, which included a new twist this year. The King and Queen race, a three-lap couples’ relay, was added to the day’s events to try to attract more racers.
“It’s a way to get girls who don’t race out here and having fun. A lot of them don’t race, so it’s something they can do together,” said Elisabeth Owen, one of the race organizers. “It’s a different kind of event; no one else does it.”
Incidentally, Owen and her race partner Matt Krywko took first place in that race – Owen’s boyfriend Frank Barry, who owns the park, was not able to race because of an injury he suffered earlier in the week.
This caused many of the other racers to joke about how they now had a chance at winning – Barry has been racing since he was quite young, and has experience racing professionally, so is often the favourite to win the informal Big Dog event.
“I like to think I’m in a league of my own on a mini-bike,” Barry laughed.
The Big Dog race is fairly simple; riders ride miniature pit bikes around a three-kilometre track, vying for the title. It’s meant to be a little bit of fun to wrap up the season.
“We always do it the last week of August,” Owen said. “It’s Alberta – it may snow in September, so let’s have fun in August.”
“We just really like miniature bikes,” Barry noted. “It’s a lot of fun.”
The Big Dog race has been going for several years, since the park opened in the summer of 2008, Barry said.
Barry used to host other races once or twice during the summer, but found there were not enough people coming out to participate.
“It’s actually not worth closing the facility down for our members who support us,” he said. The club has several hundred paying members who buy annual passes to the site.
Barry said he built the site, which has four tracks on a quarter section of land near Highway 651 in the border of Westlock and Barrhead counties, mostly because he wanted to have a track on which to ride and practise.
He has competed in races all around western Canada, although he has not been as competitive in recent years after suffering a serious injury in 2006.
Now, he spends much of his time working on the tracks and doing mechanic work on bikes, which is how he earns his living.
As for next year’s event, Barry said he has not yet decided if it will go ahead, as interest in the race has not been as high as he would like to see.
“There always seems to be something else going on this weekend. It’s pretty sad,” he said.
“If there’s no interest next year, we won’t do it again.”
