Aiming to bring the thunder from Down Under to the first-ever FIM Intercontinental Games (ICG), FIM Oceania has assembled a talented eight-rider team that fuses together youth and experience for the event scheduled for 30 November and 1 December 2024 at the Circuito de Jerez – Ángel Nieto in Southern Spain.
The inaugural ICG – officially entitled the City of Jerez FIM Intercontinental Games – will feature Supersport and Supersport 300 classes with R7 and R3 machines provided by ICG Official Partner Yamaha Europe. As this biennial event becomes established, plans are in place to add further sports – including off-road disciplines such as Motocross and Enduro – to the schedule.
Bringing together all six FIM Continental Unions (CONU) for a weekend that celebrates the FIM Family’s core ethical values and ongoing commitment to diversity, the ICG will see the Oceania team managed by double FIM Supersport World Champion Andrew Pitt take on teams from the other CONUs of Asia, North America, Europe, Africa and Latin America and represents a major part of the FIM’s one-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary year activities.
At just sixteen years of age, the youngest member of the team is Australia’s Cameron Swain who is a former FIM Oceania Junior Cup winner who this year finished the FIM R3 bLU cRU World Cup in ninth. Swain will contest the Supersport 300 class alongside his eighteen-year-old compatriot and Oceania R3 Captain Archie McDonald and twenty-two-year-old Kiwi racer Jesse Stroud who is the current New Zealand Supersport 300 Champion.
The final member of FIM Oceania’s effort in the Supersport 300 category is nineteen-year-old Tara Morrison who has valuable international experience as well as being a three-time winner of the South Australian Women’s Cup.
In the Supersport category, thirty-year-old Mike Jones – a three-time Australian Superbike champion and former MotoGP™ rider – has taken on the role of Captain with back-up from twenty-seven-year-old Tayla Relph who this season has finished seventh in the FIM Women’s Circuit Racing World Championship.
They will be joined in action on R7 machinery by fellow Australians Tom Toparis and Max Stauffer. A two-time Australian Supersport champion, twenty-four-year-old Toparis also has experience of international racing while twenty-year-old Stauffer is a former national Dirt Track champion who this year made his FIM World Championship debut with a wild card ride at the famous Coca-Cola Suzuka 8 Hours in Japan.
Peter Doyle, FIM Oceania President, said: “The FIM Intercontinental Games is a superb addition to the FIM motorcycle racing calendar and I’m sure it will deliver exceptionally close racing at one of the world’s great circuits. The quality and depth in the FIM Oceania team is outstanding and I know the riders are desperate to etch their names into the history books as the first-ever winners of the FIM Intercontinental Games. It’s going to be a thrilling event.”
Organised with the support of la Junta de Andalucía, the City of Jerez FIM Intercontinental Games brings together forty-eight riders from nineteen countries and takes place on 30 November and 1 December 2024 at the Circuito de Jerez – Ángel Nieto in Southern Spain.
Published by: Isabelle Lariviere – Communications Manager
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