Video: Sturgis Gets in Gear for Return of Weekend Bike Rally

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STURGIS, Miss. (WCBI) — Thunder Road is returning to Northeast Mississippi this week when “The Rally’ comes back to Sturgis in Oktibbeha County after a four-year break. And organizers are revved up for some big things.
The welcoming mat is being rolled out once again for motorcycles of all shapes and sizes and thousands of event-goers attending this weekend’s bike rally. The small town of a couple hundred residents usually swells as the crowd occupies main street and nearby Diane Jackson Memorial Park.
“We have people from all over the country that have come to the rally. We’ve had people from all over the country that have contacted us, wanting to know when we were going to have it again. That they wanted to come back,” says Rally organizer Donnie Hanson.
In 2005, some 20,000 people attended the event which helped to boost the local economy, if only for a weekend. Many factors sparked the end of the rally in 2010, but those differences are being put aside.
“It was a lot of politics involved. Some greed, and we, we just put the information out there and we let the town people decide and the town people took care of the politic problem. And the town now has a board that wants the rally back,” Hanson explained.
While the community now seems eager, organizers are remaining realistic about what to expect. It still has its music lineup Friday and Saturday night but not the national headliners the event has brought in in prior years.
“My personal goal is that if we can have a thousand people here, we’ll be good. If we get more than 2,000 I’ll be ecstatic. I’m kind of looking at closer to two maybe three thousand,” Hanson noted.
The first rally started in 1997 here in Little Sturgis with Jody James. This Saturday, a pavilion will be named in her honor.
Registration for the three day bike rally begins at eight Friday morning. The annual dinner ride, this time to storm-damaged Winston County, starts at 4 p.m. Friday.
For a schedule of motorcycle rally events, visit its web site at: http://msrally.com/noflash/index.php

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