DUBAI // Inside the KTM showroom on Sheikh Zayed Road, in front of a wall of orange merchandise and behind a pair of motocross bikes, 10 men and a boy stand proudly.
They make up the majority of the KTM UAE Racing Team, and they are being presented by Michael Winter, the general manager of the company’s Middle East operations.
“Maybe I’m jumping the gun,” Winter said, “but I really believe we are going to be painting the podiums orange this year.”
The star of the 19-man team is Sam Sunderland, a Dubai-based Englishman who wrote his name in the riding record books earlier this year when he became the youngest competitor to win a stage at the Dakar Rally in January.
Backed by Red Bull and a member of the KTM factory marque in the Cross-Country World Championship, Sunderland, 25, will compete for the UAE team in both the Emirates Desert and Dubai Motocross championships.
“I’ve just got back from Rally Brazil and am now getting ready for my next rally in Morocco,” Sunderland said.
“But while my main job is obviously Dakar and the world championship for the factory team, all my training is done here in Dubai and it’s great to have this support structure around me.”
Sunderland is joined this season by childhood friend Jake Shipton, who he hopes will keep him enthused “to go riding and keep the high level”.
Among the others are 13-year-old Nicolas Kefford and Emirati rider Mohammed Balooshi, a two-time UAE Motocross champion, in 2009 and 2010.
“My hope this season is to climb the rankings in the cross-country world championship,” Balooshi said. “Currently, I am sitting eighth, so I would like to break into the top five. It’s an achievable goal and I have been working really hard this year on cardio, strength and balance and have lost five kilograms – not because I was fat, but because I had an extra five kilograms somewhere.”
gmeenaghan@thenational.ae
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