Paul Oughton, Founder and Editor.
Paul Oughton was brought up with Off-Road Motorcycle sport, with machines ringing in his ears from an early age attending his first Weymouth Speedway meeting at 18 months old. His Dad was a Grasstrack rider, and the workshop at the back of their house was shared with local speedway riders. As well as attending Speedway, the weekends were spent at Grasstracks with his Dad or going to Motocross, Enduro, Sidecarcross or Trials events throughout the local area.
At the age of seven Paul started riding himself, learning to ride at the back of the speedway stadium and in the quarries on Portland before progressing to race motocross with the Poole and Parkstone and Hants and Dorset clubs, and going on to race with other clubs such as Ringwood, South Somerset and Norton Radstock as well as competing in many Nationals.
Paul stopped racing Motocross at 14, moving into Adult Grasstrack racing when he was 16 progressing to a National level and topping the 350 grading list in 1996. Speedway came calling when he was 17 where he rode for the Isle of Wight, Exeter and Newport also earning a call up to Team GB Under 21 against a full Russian team.
A big crash at the end of 1998 saw Paul retire from racing, where his thirst for travel and music took over. A job working at Haven Holidays was the next port of call but the Speedway industry was calling and he took the big steps to start a sports marketing agency working with Speedway, Ice Hockey, Football, Rugby, Boxing clubs, organisations and event organisers. With the business going well Paul started motocross again, racing for the first time in 16 years before progressing into Enduro. In 2013 he became the Guinness World Record Holder for the longest distance ridden on a Motocross bike in 24 hours at the Rogershill Raceway in his native Dorset.
Alongside this, he also founded and Co-Presented the Biker FM Speedway Radio Show which at its peak had 40,000 worldwide listeners, created All Terrain Events with Tony Nash running the British Beach Cross and British Dirt Track Championships which included Minibikes and Quads and working on PR and Marketing for a number of Off-Road brands and teams. In January 2017 Paul decided to build a WordPress website as his colleague at his company So&So Marketing was reluctant to move away from their current web platform and that is how Dirt Hub was born, with no real plan and no real direction just armed with a passion to showcase and promote Off-Road Motorcycle racing in the UK.
Since then the website has grown to feature over 2000 Race Reports and articles and reaching close to 1 million page views. This year Paul was joined at Dirt Hub by Jeff Perrett as they look to grow the site and in doing so the sports they love with it!
In 2018 Paul joined forces with Jeff and Julie Coyne to create the Steel Hawk Motorcycle club which has now run two of their ‘Rock it ‘til Sundown’ Midweek Motocross Classic’s with plans for more.
Paul has been involved as a rider or promoter of every sport that is featured on Dirt Hub and his passion for them all is prevalent to see on the site, and his plans don’t stop here. Watch this space!
