Terreblanche misses top ten
Shannon Terreblanche missed out on a top ten finish in the fourth round of the Belgian Motocross
Championships at Tongeren on the weekend.
"Don't take a knife to a gunfight," goes the adage. Pretty sound advice, to be sure,
but for Terreblanche there was precious little choice as he rolled up for the Tongeren event.
The South African had thrown his hat into the 250cc ring again for the 2011 season, but the
Belgian International championship is an open class, which means that he would be pitted against
some brutally-strong, 450cc machinery in his first Belgian outing for the year.
The race day started out with its share of troubles for the Van Haut Honda rider as he was forced
onto his spare bike for the qualifying session. He could only fit in a few laps, and this did him no
favours at all, and he qualified way down in 23rd position. His self-imposed objective for the
meeting was to use the event as a training exercise and keep the bike rubber-side down, and in the
first race he made good progress through the field to finish in 12th position against some pretty
serious opposition.
In the second heat, Terreblanche launched into a much better start, and despite being in the
midst of a GP star-stacked field, he held his own, and this time he brought his 250cc Honda home in
10th position. The third race was a virtual carbon copy of the second, and Terreblanche again
steered his little-train-that-could to 10th spot.
With his day's objective of three solid, trouble-free heats fulfilled, Terreblanche just missed
an overall top 10 result on the day. For a spur-of-the-moment race on a greatly out-powered bike, he
had some reason to smile as he headed back to his team's base in Holland.