By Danny Brault

While a half dozen Canadians will be racing supercross the next few weekends, Machine Racing riders, Kyle Keast and Chuck Melsey, will be going on an African lion safari … well, sort of.

    Last summer, Barry Heatherington opened up a MX track in Port Perry, Ontario. In an attempt to bring the facility some notoriety, Heatherington held weekly and weekend races with substantial purses for the pro classes. It worked. The events attracted top eastern pros such as: Keast, Mesley, Ryan Gauld, Richard Chater, Tyler Medaglia, Trever Hall and Johnny Silegren. Chater, who came over to Canada from South Africa, had a friend who enjoyed the hard charging style of Keast and he began speaking with Keast’s father, Jamey, about possibly sending his son overseas to race a South African national. At first it seemed like just talk, but the Keast’s quickly learned that the man was all business.

    Keast and Mesley flew out of Toronto today, and will spend a week practicing in South Africa before they race. We caught up with Keast before his big trip to get his feelings on this huge opportunity.

RXC: Kyle, we hear you’re heading to South Africa? How did that come about?

Kyle Keast: Well, Selwyn Momberg spoke to my dad in Port Perry and asked if I would like to do something like that, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll phone up Kyle and see what he wants to do.’ I didn’t really think anything of it. Then he phoned me in December just after the Toronto supercross and he asked if I would like to go down there, all expenses paid and he said there was $10,000 in prize money. At first we were just going to leave on like the 21^st or something, then get down there and just race on the 25^th, 26^th, but the guy from South Africa emailed me, and he has a practice track setup, so he said for us to come earlier and ride a bit before we race. It should be fun.

Does Selwyn live in Canada, or is he from South Africa?

He lives here, yeah. But he’s going to come down with us too.

How did you meet Selwyn?

Just at Port Perry. He said he’s been watching me ride for a long time now; I didn’t know the fella. Then he approached my dad about it, cause he just he liked the way … he goes, ‘Kyle would look good, I think, on a big GP track.’ And that’s where we’re going, so ….

The guy you’re speaking to from South Africa, is he the race promoter?

Yeah, he’s part of their promotions team. The promoter of this event finally gave the okay and everything so they can pay for everything. They said they will have a mechanic over there to set our suspension and do everything we need.

Have you ever been outside of the country, other than traveling to the U.S?

No. I haven’t even been on a plane.

Are you nervous?

Well, I’m pretty excited. I think it’s going to be fun. It would be kind of cool if someone else came along; I know [Chuck] Mesley will be with me, but like a family member or something.

Where will you be staying in South Africa?

Port Elizabeth.

And, so what kind of race is this? A national?

Yeah, it’s called the Rover National or something. They just want more nations to come over and they want to get the racing bigger over there. It’s just a national, not a GP, but they want to get their own national series going. The track is called Rover Raceway, and it goes February 25^th and 26^th.

Did you ever think MX would lead you to something like this?

No, I didn’t think I would ever end up doing that.

Good luck in South Africa, Kyle.

Thanks. And I just want to say thanks to Selwyn and his family for this opportunity.