KING PIPS COOK TO TOP SPOT

NEWS Friday 19th April 2013, 11:18pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Chris Harris, Eddie Kennett and Craig Cook were all tipped for the top spot in the British Semi-Final at Armadale but the man who came out top of the pile was Danny King, Birmingham’s stylish heat leader.

Mind you it was by the narrowest of margins over home star Cook, who tied with King on 14 points. The rule to split ties starts with numbers of wins and second places, then moves on to ‘who beat who’ and at that point, King took it due to his heat 11 victory over Craig.

It’s not a great rule but that’s what it is, and the home fans were happy enough to see Craig romp home ahead of Eddie Kennett (heat 13) and Chris Harris (heat 20), each time by quite substantial margins.

The night was marred a little bit by a lengthy delay before heat 7 due to an electrical fault, for which the club apologises. We have some very conscientious and knowledgeable people responsible for our electrics, but things can still go wrong and they did tonight.

However the show got back on the road and the meeting was still completed in reasonable time on a day which had been sunny but which became pretty cold!

As it happens, once racing resumed heat 7 proved to be one of the best races of the night, with Harris battling to overcome one of several slow starts he made. He swept past Stuart Robson and drove hard under Kennett, but unfortunately tipped the unlucky Eddie off his machine. That incident kept Bomber out of the top three.

There were some other good races though the outside line proved the strongest one for most of the night.

The second Monarch Derek Sneddon rode well but rather messed up his first race, which seemed to be his easiest. Thereafter he took the scalps of Ashworth, Grieves and Lawson and but for that opener, he could well have qualified.

Kyle Howarth and Ricky Ashworth were fallers, and though Howarth’s crash looked the more serious the early prognosis is that he is OK but Ashworth may have picked up an injury.

The British Final qualifiers are:

Danny King 14, Craig Cook 14, Eddie Kennett 12, Chris Harris 11, Richie Worrall 11, Stuart Robson 9, James Wright 8. Reserve will be James Grieves 7.

The other scorers: Derek Sneddon 6, Kyle Howarth 6, Charles Wright 6, Ricky Ashworth 6, Chris Mills 4, Richard Lawson 3, Ashley Morris 2, Steve Worrall 1.

The Scotwaste Monarchs race at Berwick in the League Cup on Saturday night.