By Kevin Mills,Staff Writer

If you make it bigger and more difficult, they will come.

That is the hope at Hemond’s Motocross Track. The track in Minot has been plotting and preparing its track expansion since 2004, and this weekend is the grand unveiling.

The New England Sports Committee Motocross will be the first scheduled organization to compete on the state’s largest track this weekend with racing today and Sunday.

“The whole expansion is 1.5 miles, and we’re opening up 1.2 miles of that,” said Serae Hemond, who co-owns the track with her husband Donald. Their son, Mike, spearheaded the building of the new track. “This is the biggest stage. The other .7 miles is not going to be as challenging.”

The existing portion of the track was in a semi-flat field and all the jumps were man made. The expansion changes those dynamics significantly. Portions of the woods have been cleared on a nearby hill, encouraging riders to soar to new heights.

“We’ve cleared a side hill and its 15 stories of elevation,” said Hemond. “It’s about 150 feet. Its also much wider. Its almost twice as wide as the old track.”

In addition to the NESC contingent, bikers from the Maine Motocross Series and the New England Motocross Association have also been invited to test drive the 1.9 mile track.

“So it’s hopefully going to attract more riders, and a higher caliber of riders once we get the word out about how challenging it is,” said Hemond. “I’m guessing we’re going to have 500-600 entries (this weekend). If we have more than that, that will be really great.”

One unexpected, and uninvited, entry this weekend could be the weather. Heavy rains and thunderstorms are forecast, which could put the entire event in limbo.

“It depends on how much rain we get,” said Hemond. “That’s so subjective. We’ve never used this track before. So we don’t know how it holds up in the rain.”

The racing is scheduled to start between 9:30 and 10 a.m and run all day. There are at least two dozen classes of riders and about 50 races each day. Each class will race twice.

Admission for the two-day event will be $20 per person on Saturday, $10 for children between ages 4 and 12. On Sunday, single-day tickets cost $10.

The Hemond’s developed the idea of a motocross track in 2001 and built it in 2002. The first race was held in July of 2002. As the track grew in popularity, so did thoughts of expansion. The Hemond’s began discussing adding on in 2004 and have been working through the long legal process, and equally tedious building stages, to make it happen. This week the finishing touches were put on the track for this weekend’s coming out party. The only bikers to ride the track thus far have been a few invited guests that offered their input after test rides this week.

“We had some riders come in to tell us what they thought of the track,” said Hemond. “On Monday, there were some bad spots and some rough spots. Tuesday, they rode it again and gave some feedback. Wednesday, the riders tried it and said it was awesome.”