Motorcycling New Zealand has named it's team to contest the Motocross of Nations on September 24 & 25 in Ernee, France.
The team is

Ben Townley
Josh Coppins
Daryl Hurley

SsangYong New Zealand continue their support of Motorcycling New Zealand in a joint venture with MNZ to support the team and it's assault on the World Teams Championship.

In making the joint announcement, Russell Burling, Managing Director of SsangYong, importers of SsangYong Motor Vehicles said "I am very pleased to be able to support the Motocross of Nations Team. It gives me great pleasure to see the world-wide achievements of New Zealanders, I believe we (the New Zealand Team) have a real chance of winning this year. Hopefully sponsorship from SsangYong will assist others to succeed internationally."

All three riders were named last year, unfortunately mechanical failures ended their assault on the Championship and the team finished a disappointing seventh.

Moving forward a year, Ben Townley current MX 2 World Champion, and currently third in the MX 1 Championship and Coppins, who first competed in a des Nations in 1993, holds second place in the MX 1 World Championship only 39 points off the leader. Hurley, current New Zealand and Australian Motocross Champion will fly from his base of New Zealand to compete in this event.

New Zealand were absent from the Championship in 2002, but a third in 2001 (a team that included Coppins and Hurley) and fourth in 2003 (Coppins, Townley & Shayne King) along with the form of the current team indicate that we are a threat to take the championship outside of Europe of the USA for the first time in its 58 year history.

Ben Townley is from Taupo, Josh Coppins from Motueka and Daryl Hurley calls Hawera home.

Youthstream, the worldwide promoters of the Motocross of Nations have organised TV coverage to an estimated 940,000,000 people around the world.

- Source from Fullnoise (Jul 21, 2005) -