Monday 6th February 2012, 12:00

Australian hotshot Chris Holder has no qualms about criss-crossing the globe three times in the space of a month as he prepares for the FIM New Zealand SGP in Auckland on March 31.

When the event at Western Springs was added to the World Championship calendar, few would have blamed Holder for staying Down Under and making the short, three-hour hop across the Tasman Sea to the land of the long white cloud.

But instead, he must return to Poole from his base near Sydney, before making the round trip to Auckland with his SGP rivals.

Holder has signed up for Shane Parker’s farewell meeting at Sheffield on March 18 and will also race for Poole in their Elite Shield double header against Wolverhampton before heading for the Southern Hemisphere.

The 24-year-old admits there was no way he could have avoided his globe-trotting schedule.

He said: “I would have loved to go straight from Australia, but I’ve got other things on and I need to go back to England first.

“All my bikes are coming from Hagon Shocks so I’ve got to go back and get all that stuff going.

“If I didn’t race in Britain, I would just go from Aussie. But when you’re committed to the Elite League, you need to go back. Their season starts at that time.

“I want to go back and ride anyway because that’s my job. That’s how it goes.”

Despite his manic travelling schedule, few riders in the SGP field have more experience of the marathon 24-hour flights between Europe and Oceania than Holder.

“Hopefully that can work in my favour,” the Poole No.1 said. “Travelling around is not easy, and especially travelling long distances.

“I’ll have the worst of it. I have to travel back Britain and then head to New Zealand a couple of weeks later.

“The jet lag isn’t easy to deal with. You get pretty tired. But you’ve just got to try and stay awake on the flight and be set up for Aussie time when you’re leaving Britain. You don’t want to be asleep all day and awake all night.”

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