Trophy winners in the Youth Championship Image Credit: Jack Cupido

Great show from the youngsters

REPORT Saturday 28th May 2022, 10:07pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Youthful British Speedway talent was on parade at Armadale this afternoon with 29 riders contesting four classes over 29 qualifying races and four finals.

It mostly went very smoothly and finished with some very competitive finals in what was the second of the 9 rounds of this summer's event.

The first heat took some time to race, and the final race which was the 500cc final also had a couple of stoppages, but there were no serious injuries. It was easy to see that quite a number of these riders are heading for places in the British Speedway leagues in the near future – some of course are already there.

From the point of view of the Monarchs Academy, their three representatives did well even though they are amongst the least experienced of the competitors. They raced in the support class at 125cc level, Lewis Hague and Rocco Webb both winning races. Hague scored 6 and made the final, Webb and Zaak Gallagher both totalled 4.

Training instructor David McAllan explained in a Facebook post that their machinery was equipment designed for the training track, up against some very expensive gear which some of the others had, and so they did very well indeed.

The whole event was a credit to organiser Neil Vatcher and his colleagues, as well as the Armadale promotion.

This is how the Finals went:

Support 125cc: Casper Cluciniak had dome well to recover from looping at the gate in heat 1, winning his next three. Unbeaten Daniel McTeer made the gate but Cluciniak brilliantly squeezed past on the back straight and led until the final lap when he fell, possibly due to a mechanical problem. Therefore McTeer won from Kayden Mundy and local boy Lewis Hague.

125cc: Stene Pijper nipped out of the start to lead but was pegged back in an excellent race by Cooper Rushen who had won three of his qualifying races and was a worthy winner.

250cc: Luke Harrison was the most dominant rider of the day and made no mistake in the final, his fifth win of the afternoon.

500cc: Ace Pijper had been the most impressive in qualifying even though he fell while leading his first race. He didn't gate well in the final though, and trying to squeeze through from third place he lifted and brought down Max James. Sam McGurk had been leading and won the rerun, with the unlucky James again knocked off this time by Freddy Hodder. James was awarded second.