World-renowned Australian motocross stunt troupe the Freestyle Kings will ride at McLean Park, Napier, next year.
The show will go on Sunday, February 9, the last of six in 10 days on a New Zealand tour of mainly provincial sports stadiums best known as rugby venues, starting indoors at Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium and with crowd capacities up to 30,000.
A shorter tour including the bigger Eden Park in Auckland and Sky Stadium in Wellington took place last November.
Napier City Council event manager Kevin Murphy said the park would have a capacity of 14,500-15,000 on the night, with seating available in the Harris and Graeme Lowe stands and general admission on the embankment.
As much as a spectacle of the Sydney-based troupe’s show is the setting-up of the park, with the troupe having performed the previous night in Hamilton.
“They’ll be in by 3pm, out by midnight,” he said.
Finer details are still to be announced, but it will be a two-hour show, from 4pm to 6pm, and registration for pre-sales is now open.
Although McLean Park has a history dating back 113 years, Murphy compares the event with the Nitro Circus which attracted about 8500 spectators to McLean Park in March 2019.
The Freestyle Kings pride themselves on original and quality motocross shows and motorcycle events, using state of the art infrastructure, production and choreography to transform the venues into pop-up arenas with turf covered with mats and using mainly inflatable obstacles.
Double black flips, front flips, BMX triple backflips and even what’s promoted as a “world-first stunt” are promised as the Moto-X and BMX riders go through their routines, on a programme that also includes music, fire artists, and pyrotechnics.
McLean Park has been closed since the April 6 Tom Jones concert as contractors complete a turf makeover, which Murphy said is going to schedule, including its first mow, with a target of being back in use for rugby and a prospective Hawke’s Bay Magpies defence of the Ranfurly Shield against Whanganui on July 27.
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