Bay of Plenty's Cody Cooper will be looking to get down and dirty this weekend as he hits the tracks for this weekend's Honda Tarawera 100 cross-country marathon.

Riding his Honda CRF450, Cody is one of the favourites to win this Saturday's 39th annual race.

Bay of Plenty's Cody Cooper, one of the favourites to win this Saturday's Honda Tarawera 100 cross-country marathon. Photo: Andy McGechan, BikesportNZ.com.

Although in an interesting twist, there is no sign of last year's defending champ and Bay rider Ben Townley.

Ben took his Honda CRF450 to win the event last year, making it a stunning consecutive hat-trick of wins for him at the popular off-road motorcycle race.

But now he is back in Europe and racing Grand Prix motocross events, enjoying the sweltering heat of Italy last weekend while his homeland is under a chilly mid-winter rain cloud.

It won't be panic stations in the Honda camp, however, with national MX1 motocross champion Cody signalling he'll return to the Tarawera 100.

The venue for Saturday's race is the same as last season, on steep farmland at 78 Tahuna Road, Te Teko, just west of Whakatane. Although the course that's been laid out this time will run in the opposite direction from last year, "just to keep things interesting and to keep the riders on their toes".

Opotiki native Cody, who now calls Mount Maunganui his home, is also no stranger to winning cross-country races and his success rate at the Tarawera 100 in the past is almost second to none.

He won the Tarawera 100 for the first time in 2007, then backed it up by winning it three more times in consecutive years between 2010 and 2012. He's chasing win number five.

Only five riders who have won the Tarawera 100 three times or more since the event's inception in 1978.

In addition to Cody and Ben, the other major winners have been Wayne Jennings (a record five-time outright Tarawera champion) and three-time former winners Nick Reader and Damien King.

Cody is taking nothing for granted in his comeback to the Tarawera 100 this weekend.

He knows last year's runner-up, Taupo rider Brad Groombridge, will be a serious threat, as will cross-country specialists such as Howick's Liam Draper, Reporoa's Hadleigh Knight, Coatesville's Sam Greenslade, Morrinsville brothers Hayden and Nathan Tesselaar, Titirangi's Callan May, Whakatane's Mitch Rees or Rotorua trio Andrew Charleston and Scott Birch and Scotty Canham, among others.

A shotgun blast at about 10am will signal the start to this gruelling 140-kilometre race' the distance gives the Tarawera 100, a 100-mile marathon, its name, is expected to take the lead riders about three hours to complete.

"The soil at Te Teko is fairly free-draining and we've taken out the steep downhill that troubled so many riders last year, so it should be a great day's racing," says spokesman for the organisers Tony Rees.