Congratulations to our very own Josh ‘Bricko” Darmody-Schembri for his Bronze medal in the Motorcycle Mechanic division the 2023 World Skills Australia National Championships.
WorldSkills is an organisation promoting skills excellence across many industry sectors. It is an international competition that works much like the Olympics Games but rather than for sport, it is for skilled trades.
Competition first starts at regional level, moving onto national and then international level. Unfortunately at the moment motorcycle mechanics do not compete at international level, so nationals is where it stops for us.
After winning the Victorian regionals last year, Josh was invited to compete in this years nationals held at the Melbourne Exhibition centre over 3 days of intense competition where he did Race Center, his family, Kangan Institute and himself very proud with his 3rd place.
Working on many aspects of motorcycle mechanics from diagnosis to wheel lacing to Josh did an excellent job against some very talented and stiff competition. Especially when you consider Josh is in his 3rd year of his apprenticeship, while some of his competitors were more experienced and fully qualified techs.
Bricko excelled in most of the areas of the testing, it was only the charging system diagnosis which caught him out a little, an area he really hasn't had much exposure to as yet. To be fair, Josh's apprenticeship has been a little unconventional by the way he has spent so much time on race bikes, working at the race track and on performance work. While clearly that stuff is super awesome, it does mean that he has had less exposure to the general workshop tasks that these competitions are assessed on.
Just a shame there wasn't a category for Superbike/Supersport race bike technician, we reckon he may have gone ok if there was one ;)
We are super proud of Josh, not just for his achievements and result, but for all his hard work and the wonderful young man that he is. We are very lucky to have him in the Race Center family.
We'd also like to extend a big thanks to Josh's family Jason, Zac and B for the support they give him, Kangan Institute and particularly Alfie for the amazing training they have provided and WorldSkills and all their partners for putting on such a great initiative and events.
We are very proud to be doing our part in the development of young talent within our industry.
