By TANIA PHILLIPS
SOUTHERN Downs Mayor Tracy Dobie had a challenging and adventurous weekend. She took up a challenge and hurtled around Morgan Park on the back of a Superbike.
Admitting this morning that her “hands are sore” from hanging on, Councillor Dobie still sounded elated after her three-lap adventure on the back of a bike piloted by former World Champion Troy Bayliss.
“It is hard to put it into words,” she said of the experience at Morgan Park yesterday during a break in racing for the Australian Superbike Championships.
“I wasn’t anxious about it until the Superbikes started and I saw how fast they go down the track.
“But Troy was so confident, calm and fun.”
Cr Dobie said she was a naturally brave person, and it helped that she had three-times world champion Bayliss as the rider.
“These guys grew up riding,” she said.
“It would be a different matter if I was on the bike with a 10-year-old.”
Cr Dobie admitted to being a fan of bike racing in her thirties and forties and growing up with her brothers riding motorbikes.
“When I watched them, I didn’t realise how small the bikes are,” she said.
She said she’d been on BMWs – big bikes and had been surprised that the superbikes were so powerful, but so small – cut down for speed.
Cr Dobie’s trip came after being challenged by WA’s City of Wanneroo Mayor Tracey Roberts, who encouraged her Southern Downs counterpart to join her becoming the second mayor in Australia to ride superbike pillion.
The ride took part as part of Round Five of the superbike championship with Mayor Dobie relishing the challenge by Mayor Roberts and keen to get in on the superbike action.
She said she’d never been one to shy away from a challenge or a little healthy competition.
“To get on the back of a superbike with a former Australian or World Champion road racer is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I’m feeling the ‘need for speed’,” said an excited Cr Dobie before the laps.
Councillor Roberts was clocked at 240km/h during her lap – so did our own mayor go faster?
“I was so flabbergasted (after the ride) I didn’t think to ask,” she laughed.
However, she said she had passed the challenge on to the Mayor of Benalla Justin King to do a lap when the Superbikes head to Winton later in the year.
“The Superbike rounds are held all around Australia, the mayor of Wanneroo challenged me, and I’ve challenged the mayor at Benalla in Victoria,” Cr Dobie said.
“I’ve already sent him a picture!”
