Jarrod Bewley takes A4DE lead

Yamaha's Jarrod Bewley is the new leader at the halfway mark of the 2009 Hog's Breath Cafe Australian Four Day Enduro (A4DE) at Orange (NSW).

The 21-year-old from Sydney really hit in straps at the business end of day two, with his victory in the final special test a whopping 8.181secs over Honda's AJ Roberts.

That was enough to see him seize the overall lead from his erstwhile teammate Chris Hollis, who is now riding for Husqvarna.

Bewley, fighting a lone hand for Yamaha's factory team after his decorated teammate, Stefan Merriman, was forced out of the event with injury, leads by 5.527secs, with Toby Price (Kawasaki) another 15 seconds behind in third. On current form, that trio looks like battling it out until the end, with another day on the trials tomorrow followed by a motocross event on Sunday.

"Last year (Hollis) was beating me by 40 seconds a day in this even, so I'm stoked with how I'm doing," Bewley said. "I thought I might have had a good chance at winning today because of how I was riding, but I wasn't sure, cause the other guys were riding really well as well.

"I thought I had put in some good times in the last half of the day, something clicked and I was really smooth, I had really clean and good runs through the last half of the day.

"Tomorrow I'm just going to do the same thing, I'm just going to stay out of the berms, just focus on what I'm doing and make sure I feel that I'm riding the best I can and that's all I can do."

Hollis described his day as "reasonable", but had one crash which cost him precious seconds.

"That was a bit of a bummer... It's pretty rocky and dusty out there," Hollis said. "Tomorrow I'm just gonna go do what I did again and try not to fall off again... just try to stay out of the dust and off the ground."

Price said he was "very happy" with how he was going.

"My body's holding up really good, my bike's working awesome... hopefully I'll just try and keep on two wheels and keep up front," Price said. "I had one little get off and then in (the final test) I broke my rear brake lever off so I would have lost a little bit of time, but hopefully not too much and hopefully I'll make up a little bit tomorrow and look forward to going into the final moto on Sunday."

Price is as former motocross star, and knows that if he can remain in contact with Bewley and Hollis on day three, he will be a huge shot to win the A4DE outright on his first attempt.

Price won three of the eight special tests today, ahead of Bewley (two) and Hollis, Chris Reading and Roberts all on one apiece.

Roberts and his Honda teammate Peter Boyle are fourth and fifth outright, ahead of Kirk Hutton (Yamaha), Josh Green (Kawasaki), Blake Hore (Husaberg), Ben Grabham (KTM) and Jehi Willis (Husqvarna).

Hutton leads Class 3 (250cc four-stroke) by 10 seconds from Green and KTM's Ben Kearney.

In Class 1 (200cc two-stroke), Grant Siebenhausen has slipped ahead of Nathan Castle (KTM) by 2.7secs.

New Zealander Rory Mead has taken the lead in Class 2 (250cc two-stroke), ahead of countryman Karl Power and Mitch Bowen (Yamaha).

In the big-bore Class 5, Willis has maintained the lead ahead of KTM's Brad Williscroft.

Alison Parker (Yamaha), Geoff Ballard (Yamaha) and Stuart Bennett (KTM) continue to dominate the women's, masters and veterans classes respectively.

For full results, click here.