Elmore's events centre, better known for farm machinery and tractor pulls, developed a jetsprint venue over roughly a year. The route ran through a council introduction, visits to other tracks and a scheduled test day before the first championship run.
When the V8 Superboats lined up at Elmore on 31 October, they opened a new Victorian jetsprint venue. The opening round of the 2026/27 Australian championship sold out, and it gave Victoria its first round of the sport in about 15 years. Yet, the work behind it began well before that.
Elmore sits about 50km north-east of Bendigo, and its events centre is best known for the Elmore Field Days. Turning part of that site into a jetsprint venue took a negotiated deal with the sport's governing body, a new purpose-built course and a scheduled AFJSA assessment before the championship opener.
A state without a track
Victoria had been without a jetsprint venue since the track at Melton, in Melbourne's outer west, closed around 15 years ago. Australian champion Justin Roylance told ABC Rural in October 2025 that there had been "a few false starts over the last decade" in trying to bring racing back to the state.
Jetsprint itself is a New Zealand invention. The sport began here in the early 1980s on braided rivers before moving to purpose-built courses, and it reached Australia in 1985. The format hasn't changed much: one boat at a time against the clock, a driver and navigator working through a set rotation of channels between islands, in less than a metre of water. New Zealand's own championship opened its last season at Featherston in December, and Kiwi crews race on both sides of the Tasman. New Plymouth's Matthew Hareb made the LS final at Elmore.
From tractors to jet boats
Elmore Field Days began as a three-day agricultural show on borrowed land and has run for more than 60 years. Executive manager Derek Shotton told the ABC that in the early 2000s the organisation decided to grow the site into a broader events centre, because it could see farm machinery crowds declining and wanted the community to keep benefiting from what it had built.
Tractor pulls and lawnmower racing came first. Jet boats extended the same strategy. Committee president John Giffin put it plainly ahead of this year's field days, telling the Bendigo Advertiser: "The field days is no longer just for the farmers anymore."
According to the Riverine Herald, Campaspe Shire's events team introduced the field days to the Australian Formula Jet Sprint Association (AFJSA), which runs the V8 Superboats championship. Shotton told the paper the committee then worked through the sport's requirements and visited other Australian jetsprint tracks before the agreement was settled. He also said the project belongs to Elmore Field Days, with help from regional sponsors.
The deal gives Elmore two championship rounds a season for five years, the ABC reported after the opener. To run them, the field days set up Elmore Jetboats, which Andrew Holmberg described to the Shepparton News as "a new business entity of the Elmore Field Days".
Building the course
Construction was under way by October 2025, when the ABC described the planned course as roughly the size of two football fields. The opening round was then expected in November 2026. It arrived a little earlier, on 31 October.
The finished course is about 1km long, with channels 3m wide and 750mm deep. Shotton told the ABC it was designed to test technical skill rather than outright speed, and on race day he reported plenty of missed corners and boats ending up on islands.
The track still had to be proven before it could host a championship. The Tuesday of this year's field days, 6 October, was scheduled as the official scrutineering and test-and-tune day. Ahead of the field days, Holmberg told the Shepparton News that AFJSA representatives would run boats through the turns and the hardest combinations of the circuit, and that the test was required before racing could go ahead. He expected four or five boats. Field days visitors could watch, look over the boats and talk to the teams.
Local volunteers also helped deliver the event. Moama Water Sports Club president Steve Shipp told the Riverine Herald that club members would marshal the course on race day and help boats after incidents.
Opening day and what comes next
Holmberg had predicted up to 35 boats for the opener. An ABC Central Victoria briefing the following Monday reported 37 teams and said organisers had turned some people away at the gate. Organisers separately reported 5,000 tickets sold. Phonsy Mullan, Bastian Mullan and Jade Atchison won the three classes, and all three finals were decided by less than a second.
The course won't stay exactly as it was. Campaspe News reported that 200mm will be shaved from one corner before the next meeting, and that work on expanding the spectator banks had begun, with Shotton aiming to finish before Christmas and irrigate through summer. The ABC separately reported plans for a third viewing bank.
Elmore's second round is on 13 March 2027, on the same day as a tractor pull and lawnmower racing. The championship calendar runs Temora, NSW, on 28 November and Griffith on 6 February before the boats return.
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