The Melville Mud Runners Association can chalk up another successful summer event.
The group, made up of local motor-sports enthusiasts, hosted their fourth annual Mud Bog Races and Tough Truck Competition recently and according to MMRA member Karl Sundquist, this was the group's best event to date.
"This has been a better year for entries than we've ever seen and we had a lot of fans out to take it in," Sundquist admits, saying two days of sunshine certainly didn't hurt the cause.
"We always have great weather and this year we had a lot of people from out of town."
Entries in the event came from all over Saskatchewan and Manitoba with Swan River and Nipawin being two of the more distant centers to have vehicles involved.
This year the group made a few minor tweaks prior to the event, but for the most part, it was business as usual.
"We focused a little more on safety this year," Sundquist tells The Advance. "We didn't have a problem before but we've done a few things to keep people safer like putting up guard blocks and cattle fence to keep people off the field and it worked very well."
Sundquist says over 80 vehicles, some stock and some modified to the hilt, were entered in the event where the pay-out for the weekend for winners was close to the $6,500 mark.
With attendance and entries up the group is hoping to accomplish something they have never been able to do in the past: put some money away for a rainy day.
"Right now, we're looking at getting set up for if we had a year that was a flop or we had rain, we wouldn't have to take money out of our pockets and this year we might be able to do that."
The organizers are pleased with how every event went off and Sundquist says, being the owner of the land near the junction of Highway 10 and 47, he'd like to see it get even bigger and better.
"You talk to people and they love everything. There's nothing you'd get rid of or change," he says adding many of the folks in attendance weren't typical motor-sports fans and one of the main attraction was a pair of Montana bike and sled riders who wowed the crowd with their aerial antics.
"Absolutely everybody comes here. We had some little old ladies who were excited about the bike jumpers - they couldn't believe that - and they loved everything."
