IT'S A big weekend for the Popperwell family from Hedge End with teenage brothers Ben and Marc taking part in the British Schoolboy Motorcycle Association finals at Culham near Abingdon.

The boys have come through four qualifying rounds, staged by the Portsmouth Schoolboy Scramble Club and a regional semi-final in Kent.

There's only 40 riders nationwide taking part in each category so it's no mean achievement by 15-year-old Ben who rides a 100cc Kawasaki in the Intermediate 100 category and 17-year-old Marc who is aboard a 125cc Honda in the senior class.

The boys are having only their first year Best of British schoolboy series and both are holding top 20 places with five rounds completed and only one to go in Gloucester later this month.

Marc has been riding since he was seven, Ben since he was eight, both learning the ropes at the Poole and Parkstone Schoolboy Club. And Ben has had some catching up to do after fracturing an elbow in a racing accident when he was 13.

He had barely recovered from that set-back when he suffered his worst injury, a broken leg, playing football for his Wyvern School side.

It almost inevitable that the boys, now members of the Portsmouth Club, ended up in the saddle.

Their dad Les and his two brothers Nigel and Mike were all successful motocross racers, winning consistently at AMCA and ACU levels.

Les remembers buying Marc an electric skooter for his second birthday. Racing for the Popperwell's is a nice family weekend out. Les, his wife Jane and the two boys travel from meeting to meeting in a motorhome which sleeps six.

The family are the main Tupperware Distributors for the area and sponsor their sons. The cost of the bikes was close to £6,000 and allowing for new tyres, travel and entry fees, the budget for the season is not far off £10,000.

The brothers hope to go on and do another national campaign next year when they expect to start making a real impression.

Ben is a pupil at Wyvern while Marc is studying to become a mechanical engineer at college in Eastleigh.

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