The King of the Corn will be crowned this weekend at the Dead Horse Creek Speedway west of Morden.
With about 2,500 spectators in the stands for July's Watermelon Cup, organizers are gearing up to do it again on Friday and Saturday, but in a much bigger way.
"The Watermelon Cup that we had on July 7th and 8th was just an enormous success," said Chris Unrau. "We had, you know, like 2,500 people there on Saturday night and the stands were jam packed and people were just loving it. It was just a phenomenal event and the feedback that we got was just fabulous."
He added, the cooler, wet weather this week has been perfect for preparing the dirt track.
Following the Watermelon Cup, Unrau said the crew realized it had a really long to-do list in order to prepare for the second event.
"Number one was, we needed more room. We recognized that the first night. Those of us that were organizing it, we kind of looked at each other and were like, 'wow! We think it's probably 1,000 or more people here'. And we had kind of been hoping for four or five hundred, so we kind of doubled our expectation on the first night. And then we thought, 'well, what's going to happen Saturday? And it just blew the doors off. The stands were just jammed."
As a result, seating for about another 1,100 spectators has been added for this weekend's event.
"So basically, the day after we finished cleanup for the Watermelon Cup, we started hauling dirt and expanding the hill around the track to be able to have more stands," explained Unrau. "We're just expecting a really big crowd. We don't quite know how to gauge this. It's a little bit nerve wracking for us because we don't know if 3,000 people going to show up or 5,000."
The spectator experience has further been improved for this weekend with additional food truck options and live performances by two local bands - Superhealer and Brothers Keep. It'll all be capped off with a fireworks show Saturday evening.
Unrau is also quite excited about bringing back the late model racing this weekend.
There's also been some modifications to the dirt track since the Watermelon Cup took place.
"Before the Watermelon Cup, we hauled about 150 loads of clay onto the track. We reshaped it and it performed just fantastically. It was great, but we recognized when we were done that we could do better," explained Unrau. "So, we hauled another 150 loads of clay on, and we reshaped it a little more, so the racing surface is really wide. To be able to race 5-wide on our track is not a problem, so that makes it for really exciting racing."
"My vision is to make it a community event," he added. "It brings the whole community out and again, our overall goal that we are striving for with this is to bring people together as a community because when we come together as a community, we can do amazing things. When we're all pulling on the same rope in the same direction, it's crazy what we can all do."
This weekend, the Speedway and spectators will be rallying around the community once again, with proceeds from the event benefitting the Boundary Trails Health Centre expansion.
With files from Ronny Guenther
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