Active8 Yamaha’s Josh Green battled through a challenging night to finish in second place at the opening round of the 2015 Australian Enduro-X Championship held at Archerfield International Speedway in Brisbane over the weekend.

Green, mounted on his WR250F, crashed heavily in his heat race in a spectacular over the handlebars fall that left him batted and bruised just minutes before the main event on the Pro class.

Despite the fall, he managed to qualify through to the 14 rider final that consisted of three, five lap sprints with the highest point scorer claiming the round win.

Green pulled off three consistent and well-constructed races to finish with 4-3-3 and take the runner up position behind US import, Mike Brown.

The result is even more impressive considering Green sat out the 2014 series with injury, so the Brisbane event for his first in national Enduro-X.

“It was a tough night,” Green said from the podium. “My crash in the qualifying race was pretty big as I was trying to double up a through the log section and the front just ploughed into the last log and spat me over the bars.

“Luckily I was able to finish and get through to the main and the team was able to get the bike back into shape and get it to the start line for the main events.

“I figured out pretty quickly that mistakes in Enduro-X can punish you, so I tried to be smart out there in the finals and just focus on putting laps together.

“If you go balls out, it’s easy to fall or hurt yourself, and that’s not going to get it done in such a short championship.

“Thank you to the Active8 Yamaha team and the WR250F was perfect tonight. We can now focus on round two and shoot for another podium in Sydney,” Green ends.

Teammate Beau Ralston entered the round under an injury cloud with a fall during the week. While Ralston managed to ride through the pain, he was far from his best and wasn’t able to qualify for the finals.

“I hurt my shoulder last week and if there is one part of your body that needs to be strong for Enduro-X, it’s your arms and upper body as you almost have to lift or man-handle the bike over every obstacle,” Ralston said. “We have a couple of weeks until the next round so I will get some rehab on it and come back much stronger in round two.”

Team manager AJ Roberts was there to guide his team through the night and came away happy with the podium result.

“Enduro-X is demanding on the bike and the riders and one mistake can ruin everything in an instant,” Roberts said. “Josh raced the finals really well and his second place also made him the highest finishing Australian rider.

“He did exactly what was required out there and second is a great start to the championship. Beau came in injured and his obviously impacted his riding. He will bounce back at round two so there is no need to be concerned other than getting him 100% fit and healthy.”

Round two of the Australian Enduro-X championship moves to Sydney on 28 February before the third and final round in Melbourne during March.