Fine end to 2019 season

NEWS Monday 14th October 2019, 7:30pm

by Toby Lerone

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The curtain came down on the 2019 season at Armadale in fine style with the junior and senior riders of the Northern Junior League putting on an excellent show.

After the event, promoter John Campbell said, "First of all it was great that all twenty programmed riders arrived to take their place in the line up and it was great that they were all happy to move the meeting on at a pace. A parade, twenty four races and a couple of delays to treat the unfortunate Freddie Fox-Baron and we were all finished within two hours."

"In meetings like this there can always be a bit of a difference in standard from the top man to the ones at the other end of the scale but I thought that Gavin Parr and David Pye battled hard for the solitary point when they met and Owen Booth, Caydin Martin and Brandon Wroblewski had the same determination in the 125s."

George Rothery was a very deserving winner of the 500s even battling through to the front in the final. Luke Harrison was the very impressive winner of the 125/150s and he's only 12! Ace Pijper also looked very good in this section and was very annoyed with himself when he slipped off his bike on the first bend of his semi-final.

Campbell continued, "Although we had a reasonable turn out these meetings can only run through the generosity of sponsors and I am particularly grateful to Colin Frame of Frame Brothers Haulage and Brian Sands of Probowl for putting up considerable sums and grateful thanks all the other heat sponsors. The riders were surprised and delighted to receive the sponsorship put up the rider sponsors."

The track staff put in a great effort to get the track ready for the meeting. It hadn't really stopped raining at Armadale since the previous match against Newcastle and they were faced with an impossibly wet track on Saturday morning. Thankfully it was a dry day and after removing about five tons of wet shale from the track a great race surface was produced which received many compliments from the participants.

Campbell concluded, "This meeting and the Caledonian Riders Championship were very enjoyable and I thank Dale Devils team manager, Alan Budzynski for his assistance in making both meetings happen. I've already spoken to him and others about going a step further in 2020 so we'll see what the close season brings."