Pitstop: Prumm riding high on both sides of Atlantic

Katherine Prumm on her way to winning in California. Picture / Glen Dempsey

New Zealand's top female motorcycle racer, Katherine Prumm, has the motocross world at her feet after victory at the first round of the FIM Women's World Cup in Germany and at the first round of the US Women's Championship at Glen Helen in California.

This weekend the 18-year-old Kawasaki rider from Bombay near Pukekohe is gunning for a second clean sweep in as many weekends at the second round of the women's Motocross Association National MX Championships at the Hang Town track near Sacramento.

Yet, incredible as it may seem to the Americans, who have taken a shine to the South African-born Kiwi teenager, come Tuesday she will be on a plane heading back to New Zealand.

Team Green (Kawasaki) manager Mike Ramsey said America this year was just a toe-dipping exercise. "Our main aim was always the World Cup."

Sweden's Uddevalla track hosts the second round of the two-round 2006 World Women's Cup over the July 1 and 2 weekend and Prumm will return to Europe later this month firm favourite.

Last year she finished runner-up at the inaugural FIM Women's World Cup (contested at a single event) to Germany's Stephie Laier.

KTM rider Laier proved the faster starter at the first FIM Women's World Cup round at Teutschenthal in Germany this year, but Prumm and French Yamaha rider Livia Lancelot caught and passed her in both races, Lancelot winning the first from Prumm, with Prumm returning the favour in the second to claim overall round victory.

Coppins back on bike

One of the two New Zealand riders who inspired Prumm to set her sights so high, Josh Coppins, is back on his bike after injury and could well make his MX1 return at the British Motocross Grand Prix at Matterly Basin over the June 17-18 weekend.

Coppins, the Motueka-born rider who finished second behind nine-times World MX Champion Stefan Everts in the 2005 MX1 Championship, dislocated his right shoulder two days before the first round of this year's championship and has had to sit out what looks like being the first eight rounds of the 2006 title chase.

This week though the 29-year-old got the all-clear from his rehabilitation team to get back on his bike and is due to have his first hit-out at a track near his Northern Hemisphere base in Belgium on Tuesday.

Townley cleared

Ben Townley is another on the road to recovery, also getting an all-clear to get back on his bike.

The 21-year-old 2004 MX2 World Champion and 2005 MX1 No 3 headed to the US late last year to fulfil a lifelong dream of riding in the AMA Supercross and Motocross Championships only to suffer a serious knee injury in a practice crash late in January.

Top status in Taupo

One event both Townley and Coppins are determined to be fit for is the Taupo Motorcycle Club's International MX Challenge to be staged at the club's Digger McEwen track over the November 4-5 weekend.

The event, timed to precede the Taupo-based 2006 Maxxis International Six-Day Enduro (ISDE) which runs from November 14-19, has already attracted confirmed entries from Townley (who cut his MX teeth on the uncompromising pumice-based track), Coppins and South African Tyla Rattray.

As well, last week the Taupo Motorcycle Club announced that the event has won official Oceania status, meaning that all the top Australian riders will be flying in to compete.

Big field for rally

Next weekend's FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship round at Rotorua is shaping up to be one of the most closely contested yet with crews from Australia, China, New Caledonia and Japan joining a bumper crop of competitive locals.

Heading the lineup for the two-day Hella International Rally of Rotorua is the privately entered Subaru Impreza of Cody Crocker and co-driver Ben Atkinson (the latter the brother of WRC star Chris Atkinson).

Crocker is a three-time Australian Rally Champion and joining him and Atkinson in a two-car Les Walkden Rallying-run Subaru team are rising Australian star Eli Evans and his co-driver Matt McAdam.

Evans is a past winner of the Australian Subaru RS Rally Challenge and he and McAdam are seeded No 2 behind Crocker and Atkinson.

Third seeded are Japanese Subaru pair Hirosh Yanagisawa and Tadashi Misaizu; fourth, the first of the Mitsubishi Evo runners, Indonesians Rifat Sungkar and Herkusuna Mohamad.

Bamber unstoppable

Wanganui's Earl Bamber qualified quickest then won all three races at the second Formula BMW Asia championship meeting at Sepang in Malaysia last weekend.

Underlining his superiority, the former New Zealand kart champion also set the fastest race lap time in two of the three races.

Young Aucklander Dominic Storey was fourth in the first race and fifth in the second and the third.