Two local teenagers are set to make their debuts at world level in the tough off-road sport of enduro riding next week.
Will Cawte and Jack Keenan will be riding as individuals in round six of the FIM Junior World Enduro Championship in mid-Wales over the weekend of August 2-4.
A third rider, Bobby Moyer, has unfortunately been forced to pull out at the 11th hour after suffering a knee ligament injury during a Peveril MCC event at Knock Froy last week.
It was hoped that the cartiledge damage incurred by the 19-year-old from Crosby would improve sufficiently for him to still compete, but the injury is going to take longer to recover from than originally hoped. Needless to say he is very disappointed to miss out.
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As a warm-up the other two will contest the British Enduro Championship rounds in Devon over the coming weekend.
All three were being assisted by Ramsey Motor Cycle Club, which paid their entries to the world round and supplied enduro racing shirts.
From a motocross background Jack has more recently switched over to enduro as his main focus. The 18-year-old from St Jude’s is an apprentice bricklayer with his father Brian Keenan’s business.
Will, from nearby Sulby, spent a couple of years off-island at Myerscough College near Preston, from where he was able to contest a number of national enduro events with reasonable success. He is 19 and is an apprentice welder/marine engineer.
They will both campaign near-identical 250 Gas Gas two-stroke machines in the Junior 1 category. The GP Enduro event, which will also include Jamie McCanney and fellow Manxman Jed Etchells, is being hosted by Rhayader MC & LCC in Powys and is the first WEC event to be held in Britain since 2008. Danny McCanney, who retired from international competition at the end of 2022, is making a one-off return to the world scene, as is David Knight who has won two rounds of the new ACU British Cross-Country Championship since returning from a hip replacement operation earlier in the year.
Knight’s elder brother Juan is not fully recovered from his bash in the Manx Two Day Trial, but is heading south to Devon for BEC event this weekend (he has won a couple of the expert vets rounds) and staying on to contest the national experts class of the world round, along with Ashley Kelly. Danny McCanney is also down for the BEC event this weekend.