Motorcycle Champion Tom Ellwood: A true green warrior

As part of our Motorcycle PR work for Kawasaki UK we find and create stories for the Kawasaki Club magazine, including this recent feature about top Army motorcyclist, Tom Ellwood.

Be the Best!

Seven-time British Army Motorcycle Champion Tom Ellwood is a true green warrior, dividing his time between driving tanks and smashing berms on his Kawasaki KX450X enduro bike.

The twenty-eight-year-old Armoured Engineer has won five gold medals at the legendary ISDE (International Six Days Enduro) and was Open 4 Stroke World Cup Champion in 2019 among other awards.

Tom, who is based in Salisbury – an area famous for both tank training and motorcycle enduros through the legendary Natterjack event, joined us for the recent media and customer test of the latest generation of KX250X/450X enduro machines, showing the ‘civvies’ his skills on the tricky steep terrain.

We caught up with Tom and his immaculate ‘Holeshot’ race machine after bossing some highly technical laps at the vast Coney Green facility near Stourport; “I’ve grown up around off-road riding since I was about six and raced motocross on a Kawasaki KX65. I did my basic training and ‘joined up’ at 16, so when I found out there was a Royal Engineer enduro team, I thought, I need to give this a go! Although I came from a motocross background it just seemed to click and it seemed like the next minute I’d progressed up through to the full Army team and then started doing it in the most professional British Enduro Championship class.

I’ve had the chance to ride in International events and was European Enduro E2 Vice Champion in 2021 but the absolute pinnacle is riding the ISDE. It's always a really proud moment to represent the Army and although it’s a super tough event, I love the nature of it and it's good to be part of the history of this prestigious event. My favourite ever event was probably Chile in 2018, such a beautiful place, great terrain and I had my best ever finish there.

I'm really lucky to be able to train and ride pretty much full time, however I do need to keep up my military career so I'm a corporal at the moment having been promoted up twice. I’ve done some exercises over in Canada, so it’s pretty varied.”

So what’s an Armoured Engineer? “I'm in the Royal Engineers and an armoured engineer basically means I drive the Titan and Trojan tanks. One is a bridge layer and the other is a mine clearance vehicle. They use a big tank Challenger 2 type chassis… we drive them over the toughest terrain and you have to be able to work on them and do servicing… it’s a bit like knowing your way around your enduro bike!”

To ‘be the best’, to use the Army recruitment slogan, Tom had to win a three-day aggregate points competition to become the 2022 Army Motorcycle Champion. The event consisted of a Prologue on a Friday night, Trials comp on the Saturday and a full-on Enduro timecard on the Sunday, all three of which he completed on the KX450X, showing real versatility of man and machine.

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