After two years of planning, the Alexandra BMX Club will finally host the South Island Championships at their own cycle track this weekend.
The track was built for the community two years ago by Fulton Hogan and has been worked on since then in preparation for this weekend.
Alexandra BMX president Steve Adair said 156 riders have registered for the two-day event, which begins at 3pm today with the Pre-Souths.
These are warm-up races to prepare riders for the actual title races tomorrow, beginning at 11am.
The best South Island BMX riders will be competing, as well as a handful of riders from the North Island, coming from as far away as Whangarei.
Riders have had the opportunity on Thursday and Friday nights to practise their electronic gate starts, which can be crucial in a close race.
Competitors range in age from 5 years to the "over-50s".
President of BMX New Zealand Bruce Northwood saw the track for the first time last night and he is very impressed.
"It's a long track - about 370m - but still short of the legal maximum limit which is 400m," he said.
Small towns generally did very well with BMX as the sport tended to have a high profile.
"They get lost in the larger cities."
And riders will have every chance of taking their sport to the top as the Bike New Zealand high-performance manager Mark Elliott and high-performance coach Ken Cools will both be at the competitions tomorrow and looking for riders to train for the 2012 Olympics.
"Half the BMX members are under 10 years of age and it is mainly a junior sport, but on the other side, you get people going to Olympic Games," Mr Northwood said.
BMX had its first team at the Olympics last year.
