Wild Rose Motocross Association - Calgary

Calgary has been a lucky city to a lot of people, but few have been more fortunate than those of us who see the MX bike as the true path to freedom.  We always fantasize about the prospect of cutting laps on the local golf course, or ski hill, or other chunk of land which offers the best view, best traction, and best topography for roosting on a motocross bike.  In Calgary, Wild Rose Motocross Park offers all of those features – and includes one of the best views of the city core in the entire region.  Originally called “Blackfoot Motorcycle Park”, this 88–acre chunk of coulee and rolling prairie offered a perfect location for the use of the early off road motorcycle.  Whether converted British four-stroke dinosaurs or zippy little Japanese street bikes, the terrain gave the 60’s motorcyclist a perfect venue to test his and his machine’s hill climbing abilities.  At the same time, the core group of serious motocross aficionados – men such as Zoli Berinyi, Sr. and local motorcycle royalty like Wayne Addison and Walt Healy – found a perfect spot for serious off road competition.  Having been land controlled by the City for as long as we can remember, those at City Hall seemed enthused with the prospect of this rabid chunk of property being used for the new and hip motorcycle sports.  With official sanction, Blackfoot Park found itself the host of the earliest sanctioned motocross events in the region, and was likely being accessed as an off road destination by motorcyclists since the first motorcycles arrived in Calgary.

In the 60’s and 70’s, Blackfoot Park was open and accessible to all who entered to ride motorcycles, and under the auspices of the Calgary Motorcycle Club, was the site of numerous trials, T.T. and scrambles/ motocross events.  The Calgary Club was a CMA affiliate and routinely hosted two-day events, sometimes holding a T.T. on the Saturday followed by motocross on Sunday, and took pride in ensuring that the track layout for each new race was unique.  No set tracks existed, but by the same token no manicuring, watering or obstacle building existed either, and the early format for MX’s included a three-moto per day format.  Imagine three 30 minute motos and no dust control:  better make it to the first corner before the rest of the gang!

Early on, Blackfoot Park developed a national reputation as a facility with near perfect hills, valleys, flats and soil for the sport of motocross, and was a popular location for the 1973 National Amateur Championship race.  Prodded by keen promoters, the Park was also the site of the 1972 Calgary International Motocross, complete with a couple international stars – or at least, guys whose name made them sound like Euro stars – and lots of TV advertising.  While this event seemed to put motocross and the park on the local map, it also did something very important for the current crop of moto-enthusiasts:  it created the famed International Jump, an obstacle still in use today, and one which forms the backbone of the track used for Calgary’s leg of the CMRC National series.

While it’s location is obviously it’s most unique feature, the facility has a number of other elements which make it special and permit us to keep riding off-road bikes:  the hills and dales of the glacially-formed coulees, in addition to being attractive to racers, offered thick top soil with hardy indigenous plant growth on leeward hillsides.  This allowed limited erosion, allowed track routing to reduce dust problems, and contributed indirectly to noise reduction, important features in a facility located near the heart of a major urban centre.

Calgary’s phenomenal growth during the 70’s lead to a re-evaluation of the worth of Blackfoot Park by City officials as a variety of projects were seen as potential beneficiaries of the land.  The proverbial “wrecking ball” was put to the park at the end of the decade, many of the hills were flattened and much of the topsoil was removed as the motorcyclists made way for “progress”.  While the City agreed to allow motocrossers to access a new chunk of land on the east side of town, no one was happy that the famed Blackfoot Park was being closed down.  However, in a strange twist of fate, the dismantling of the Park was stopped when Calgary’s seemingly endless oil boom ran out of gas, as it were.  Motorcycle historians have routinely argued about the causes of the oil boom collapse, but the consensus of opinion in our quarter is that the then Prime Minister of Canada, the Honourable P.E. Trudeau, heard the desperate pleas of Calgary motocross racers as they saw their beloved Blackfoot Park being flattened, and responded by introducing the National Energy Program.

Thanks to the success of the NEP in turning Calgary into an economic ghost town by the early 80’s, off road enthusiasts were gradually able to move back into the remaining hills at Blackfoot Park.  Unfortunately, they did so without control or order, and soon motocrossers found themselves riding beside 4×4’s and other off road vehicles.  Anarchy reigned, and something had to be done.  Enter Wild Rose Motocross Association.