Cobra Moto would also like to recognize its 2011 “Honorable Mention” racers: Tommy Rios (Florida), Tanner Ward (Canada),

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JOGGINS — Damon Burbine’s feet have an aversion to the ground.

The seven-year-old answered questions Tuesday about how to properly land a dirt bike while he tried to perform an ollie on a skateboard in his father’s shed.

"You got to lean forward but not too much," Damon says of his dirt bike technique.

"If you’re too far forward, you give ’er some gas."

Shelves behind the workbench hold a forest of trophies Damon has won on the Canadian Motosport Racing Corp. circuit in Atlantic Canada. Damon has been carving out a name for himself in the dirt bike racing world, winning three of five circuits, each consisting of seven to nine races, in the past three years.

That’s right — he started racing 50cc dirt bikes at age four, against children his own age.

He also plays hockey, soccer and basketball, skateboards and rides his BMX bicycle.

"I get a lot of grief sometimes from people who say he’s too young," says his mom, Stacey Gilroy.

"But just seeing his passion, you try to give him anything you can. If he has a chance to make it big, I wouldn’t want to take it from him."

Dirt bike racing means many 4 a.m. summer mornings, packing into the truck and heading to the Annapolis Valley or New Brunswick for races.

While Gilroy braces her nerves and talks with other mothers about protective gear and the normal trials and tribulations of parenting, Damon’s father, Jason Burbine, talks clutches, timing and fuel mixture with other fathers doubling as crew chiefs.

"The kids run around and play in the mud, meet their heroes and racing pros," Gilroy says.

"It’s not as mean as hockey can be."

Then it’s time to race.

Pull-cords are yanked, causing tiny cylinders to erupt into clattering and unsteady idles. Then the throttles are cranked open as the parents hush and their children bob and weave down carved runs and over jumps. Mud flies everywhere, and the motocross racers become hard for untrained eyes to distinguish from one another.

Then — always with a trophy it seems — Jason, Stacey, Damon and his sister Cadence pack back into their vehicle and head home to Joggins. Hotels are expensive and invariably someone has to go to work anyway.

But next summer, the whole crew will be heading to the dirt bike nationals in Walton, Ont.

"He’s a perfect kid, but you need to keep him on the go," Burbine said of his son.

"He’s got so much energy that he’d drive you crazy sitting around the house."

( abeswick@herald.ca)

The Campbell River Motocross Association would like to give our sincere thanks to those businesses and corporations that have helped us through the last year. Without the generous help from all of them we could not have run a successful race series as we did. We are in a very good position to improve and expand our facility for the future.

A dedicated team has throughout the last few years improved the facility in many ways. A concrete start pad and refurbished start gate has been constructed with the help of our sponsors and supporters. We have introduced new material to keep the track more useable throughout the riding season.

High on the list of priorities is watering for the track on hot and dusty days with our own watering system which is almost complete. This has been a huge task and is now 99 per cent there and ready for the second phase of the system to be completed.

This year has seen us introduce Hare Scramble events that have proved very popular. We are looking at running these again in 2012.

We are constantly looking at introducing new facilities and more are planned for the upcoming year. We will be building a bike wash area, thanks to a Regional District grant, completing our track water system and also the rebuilding of our 50cc mini track.

We also have plans to run an Enduro-cross entirely in the confines of the track area.

If you can give your time, help and skills in any way to make our facility better, safer and more attractive to all dirt bikers and their families, we welcome your help and support.

I would like to thank the outgoing executive for their hard work and consistent efforts throughout the last year. I hope that the coming year will give us more success and we can continue to make CRMA the most successful track on the Island.

I will be handing over the Presidency to Tim Fluter for this year whilst I will step backwards just slightly, to Vice President.

We take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters during 2011 and look forward to meeting and keeping your support for the next year.

CRMA 2011 President Paul Wilkinson

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