ERIK BACK IN ACTION

NEWS Thursday 14th May 2015, 9:49pm

by Toby Lerone

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Less than three after breaking his collar bone at Workington, Erik Riss was back in action today in the first World Long Track Grand prix of the season at Herxheim in south west Germany.

With just a practice under his belt yesterday Erik lined up to defend his crown and he made a flying start by winning his first two races in fine style before suffering a very costly engine failure in his third race. After that his scoring wasn't so good and his 15 point tally was just not good enough to secure him a final place.

The third race engine failure was very costly as had he finished that race he would have scored an additional point to take him to the final. He finished seven points behind leader Joonas Kylmakorpi.

We now await to see if there is any reaction from his collar bone injury before confirming that he will be racing on Friday evening at Armadale. It was Erik's intention to fly into Edinburgh on Thursday evening.

Elsewhere on Thursday Ipswich's match with Glasgow was rained off ninety minutes before start time and therefore Gino Manzares did not get the chance to try out his shoulder blade injury before travelling to Armadale on Friday.

Craig Cook was guesting for Sheffield on Thursday night in a thriller with Peterborough but couldn't prevent Panthers guest, Brady Kurtz, from winning the last race to secure a draw. Craig came up against Brady three times on the night and came out second best on each occasion, winning his other two races. He'll need to have his gating boots on next week when Kurtz will no doubt be guesting for Sheffield against the Border Roofing Monarchs in the first leg of our Knock Out Cup tie with the Tigers at Owlerton.