Belle Vue Aces v Edinburgh Monarchs

We didn?t do ourselves justice on a difficult Belle Vue track and were well beaten in the Elite Promotion match.

Last year's equivalent event at Wolverhampton was a party for all supporters with a great atmosphere and plenty of exciting racing.

The meeting this year in no way lived up to that standard.

For Monarchs only Kalle Katajisto consistently impressed, though Matthew Wethers picked up points towards the end.

Early fallers were a problem for us as we discovered that track conditions didn?t encourage full-blooded racing.

The first faller was Ryan who made a decent start in heat 1 but lost it coming out of the second turn and fell awkwardly. Aaron Summers was the first rider replacement but looked extremely slow in the rerun.

He was no better in heat 2 but Kalle attacked the track and picked up a good second place,

Patrick Hougaard is an impressive rider and he led heat 3, with Andrew Tully charging after him. Andrew though became the next faller, and from then on he never looked the same.

Heat 4 was the most encouraging start yet as Katajisto gated and led fairly comfortably from Kasprzak. It seemed even the Aces didn?t fancy a real chase, but it wasn?t required anyway as Kalle came down.

So we trailed 18-6 when the position could have been a great deal better.

Heat 5 was a good battle for the minor places, with Hougaard well ahead. Kalle and Ryan seemed to have got the better of Auty until Ryan lost it on the final turn.

We did get an advantage in heat 6 though. Kevin Wolbert got clear at the first corner and led all the way, and when James wright became the latest faller, Aaron grabbed a gift point.

Andrew and Matthew pushed Sweetman to the rear in heat 7 as we improved our position, and we tried Kalle as our first TR in heat 8.

We were on the wrong end of a 5-1 for a bit but in an excellent ride, Kalle passed Ostergaard to secure 4 points.

Strike while toe iron is hot: Kevin was the next TR in heat 9. It didn't come off this time though and we were hit by a maximum.

The only break over the next four heats was a decent second place for Ryan behind Kasprzak in heat 11. After heat 13 we had slumped to 55-25 and looked like conceding 60.

Heat 14 was much better for us though. Auty came off while battling with Kalle and Matthew, and in the rerun both our riders passed the early leader Sweetman for a 5-1.

On the first corner of heat 15 Kevin fell heavily, and at the next attempt Hougaard picked up an exclusion for pushing Matthew wide and off.

Finally Kasprzak completed his maximum but we had kept the Aces below 60.