Shahin: I hope South Australians will be proud of having this in their back yard

WHAT makes The Bend, which opens for competition today, a world-first.

12.4.2018.SUPERCARS drivers David Reynolds and Garth Tander with Sam Shahin at The Bend motorsport park. PIC:TAIT SCHMAAL.

THE Bend managing director Sam Shahin is today a man of mixed emotions.

Five years after he initiated the $110 million The Bend, a multi-discipline motorsport park outside of Tailem Bend, it will open for competition as Shannons Nationals run today and tomorrow.

It will be followed by Troy Bayliss heading up a Superbike race next weekend and the Supercars arriving later in the year.

To the purists, the first event is every bit as big as the revamped Adelaide Oval’s first games of football and cricket.

“It’s a mixture of excitement, along with a lot of anxiety, along with the weight of responsibility to showcase what we believe is one of the best facilities of the world,” Shahin told The Advertiser. “We are, of course, very biased and we’re hanging off the report card of the motorsport public to pass their verdict.”

The sky is the limit for The Bend. Within 12 months, it will have a 100-room hotel — half of it is open now — a camping site, an internationally certified go-kart track, 400 trackside villas, a drag racing strip and an off-road rally track.

It already looks plush, with a 1km straight that will have cars driving at frightening speeds and a five-star hotel feel about it.

In the welcome centre, the lobby of sorts, there are cars worth $8 million on display, among them a grand set of Porsches, Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari from 2003 and two championship-winning Supercars.

“There isn’t any other facility, anywhere in the world, that has similar facilities,” Shahin said. “There isn’t anywhere in the world that combines all those disciplines of motorsport through one gate.

“The grand vision is to have a proud facility that every South Australian can say is their own — in the same way I walk through the city and look at Adelaide Oval.

“I didn’t build it, I don’t own it but I’m a South Australian and I’m proud to have that in South Australia.

“I’ll be a very satisfied man when every South Australian can look at a facility like this and say ‘I’m very proud to have this in my backyard’.”

Among the high-profile competitors in this weekend’s racing are Supercars stars Garth Tander, David Reynolds and Shane van Gisbergen.

They are here not only for the thrill of seeing the first racetrack that has been opened in Australia during their careers, but also to have a knowledge edge when the Supercars arrive here later in the year.

But as much as Supercars has been a star category for Adelaide since the Formula 1 was lost, Shahin has a vision beyond what has already been secured.

“There are a lot of events in the pipelines,” he said.