When dirt-bike racer Bruce Moffatt tears through a race course, there’s no time to admire the scenery. Every sense and instinct is devoted to scouting the terrain and dodging the obstacles in his path.
“When you’re weaving your way through the woods at 50 kilometres an hour and your handlebars are an inch away from the trees, one wrong move and you go flying,” says Moffatt, who has competed in Poland and the Czech Republic, and who also has toured across Canada as a racer.
Then, there’s the pressure of staying ahead of the competition. At the start line, madness ensues. “There may be 30 to 40 guys funnelling into the first corner all at once, and everyone’s banging handlebars,” says Moffatt. “All of a sudden, the pack has to fit into one lane or one narrow trail in the woods. It all comes down to who has the guts to hold onto the throttle the longest before you have to hit the brakes.”
Even though Moffatt is 52 years old, the financial advisor and director of wealth management with Richardson GMP Ltd. in Mississauga, Ont., says he’s like a kid on Christmas Eve the night before a race. And he insists that he is in no way daunted by his younger competitors, the average age of whom is 29 — even when Moffatt represented Canada at the World Enduro Championships five years ago in Parry Sound, Ont.
“I was like an overage walk-on player going up against Sidney Crosby,” he says. “It was cool — and it didn’t matter that I got my butt kicked.”
Enduro racing — a long-distance, off-road competition that involves a complex set of rules and a clock — is not to be confused with motocross racing, which runs in 15-minute sprints. The Parry Sound race, for example, lasted 14 hours over the course of two consecutive days. It’s no wonder, Moffatt says, that it turned riders into a bag of nerves.
“You ride up to a [rocky hillside] — and some of them were as steep as 45- to 50-degree angles — and it’s littered with rocks the size of microwave ovens,” Moffat says. “So, you have to maintain your forward momentum. Meanwhile, this bike is bouncing around under you and you’re dog-paddling your feet to get up and over.”
A lover of motorcycles, Moffatt also has entered his two sons, Chris and Connor, into local races.
Moffatt himself started participating in motocross for fun at the age of 17. But, with the growing popularity of the sport, he found it frustrating that the wait for races would take so long and yet the races would end so quickly.
“I saw that you get so much more riding [in] enduro,” he says. “I realized if I was going to throw my leg over a bike, I wanted to be on it for three or more hours, not 15 minutes at a time a couple of times a day.”
Moffatt’s hairiest moment came in Spain 12 years ago, when he started competing in enduro. Just as he was starting to descend a mountain, he realized his front brakes had failed — and no one else was around to help.
“Even if your back brakes are working, you’ll still plummet like a rock,” he says. “I had to ‘bulldog’ the bike. Picture a rodeo guy grabbing a bull by the horns. I had to do that with my motorcycle going down this big, steep, rocky base.”
A dirt bike can weigh well over 90 kilograms, which on its own isn’t heavy, says Moffatt, adding that he can bench-press one. “But when you add on about [20 kg] of mud, you’re wearing about [30 kg] of gear and you’re three hours into the event, they feel like they weigh [450 kg].”
The dirt-spraying, engine-rumbling aspects of this sport stand in stark contrast to Moffatt’s other life as an advisor, husband and father. In fact, Moffatt says, most of his clients still don’t know what he does for fun. (He lets them think he plays golf.)
Racing has helped Moffatt become a strong advisor, he says, because it teaches taking control and learning to handle anything that gets thrown his way.
As for Moffatt’s family life, he says: “My wife puts up with it. She knew my passion was in motorcycles, and her response was, ‘Well. It could be worse’.”
However, family is one of the reasons why Moffatt will not be racing competitively this year: “It takes a lot of time away from the family, [and] kids entering their teenage years can be challenging.
“But I’ve been through this before,” Moffatt adds. “When I bought my first house, when I was 22, I had to give up racing for five years because I had to buy a couch and pay off a mortgage first.”
There’s also the fact Moffatt has sustained injuries caused by repetitive stress from riding, although, he hastens to add: “I’ve had more debilitating injuries playing Friday-night beer-league hockey than I ever have from racing motorcycles.”
Moffatt sees himself returning to racing and competing in the Over 40 and Over 60 classes, which, he says, are very popular in Canada.
Recreationally, his favourite spots to race have been the Andalusia mountains in Spain and in Western Canada. He loves how the terrain in those mountainous regions can change from being harsh and rocky to lush and green. “This is part of my evolution in riding,” he says of his plans for the future. “I was pretty driven 10 years ago, but I’ve slowed down the intensity.”
Case in point: rather than competing this year, Moffatt will be in Chile this month, riding BMW motorcycles with friends — including two financial advisors from Richardson GMP Capital and CIBC Wood Gundy.
“We’ll go to restaurants and drink good wine, stay at nice hotels and just enjoy the scenery,” Moffat says, “which, for me, will be a refreshing change. Every time I travel to these nice locations, I’m totally wound up and riding my brains out. And then I have to try really hard later to remember where I just rode.” IE