Two out of two for the Stellar Academy

REPORT Sunday 11th May 2025, 0:01am

by James Black

  Edinburgh Monarchs Academy

An all-round solid team performance saw the Stellar Monarchs Academy make it two wins out of two in the National Development League following an action and incident packed meeting against the Belle Vue Colts.

The Colts, led sensationally by young British starlet William Cairns, who scored a faultless 18 point maximum, simply didn't have the solid scoring down the line that the Academy had as the home side produced a workmanlike performance to pick up a ten-point win on the night.

The meeting however, was a much tighter and tense affair, full of thrills and spills with no more than three points separating the two sides up until heat nine, and no more than five between then up to heat 13.

The spills started as early as heat one, when Kyran Lyden produced a tremendous cut back to get the better of Cairns to lead briefly, before becoming a cropper on the entry to bend one when leading relatively comfortably. In the rerun, it was Connor Coles who led Cairns for three and nine tenths of a lap before getting his pocket picked on the run to the line, not for the last time either.

Lyden would find himself in the wars again in heat eight, having dusted himself down only to become the unfortunate victim of first bend bunching in heat 8, and in the rerun when grabbing a big handful attempting to round Jack Shimelt on bends three and four only to be swallowed up in the air fence, in a crash described as "cool looking" by the man himself.

That left all the pressure on the shoulders of Mark Parker, who found himself the lone representative for the home side rider in the third rerun, but he shot from the gate to pick up his second win of the night as he enjoyed his best ever meeting in Academy colours, proving to be the difference between the two sides in the end.

With the meeting on a knife edge and the Academy leading by three, the turning point in the evening perhaps came in heat 10, when Connor Coles got the better of Belle Vue's lively guest duo of Danny Phillips and Mickie Simpson and with reserve Lee Harrison buzzing all over the back of the latter before making a great pass on his much more experienced opponent. However, disaster struck when Simpson clipped the back of Harrison when attempting to repay the compliment, resulting in an exclusion and a very alarming crash which saw both riders take no further part in the meeting, though both did walk away.

With the race awarded a 4-2, it opened the gap to five and despite the best efforts of Cairns, who won heats 11 and 13 (where he pinched another win on the line over Coles) and Danny Phillips who won heat 12, it was the home side who packed the minor places to maintain their lead.

Heat 14 saw Sam McGurk and Mark Parker cruise round for an uncontested 5-0 to put the meeting to bed, as Belle Vue's reserve pairing Billy Budd and Owen Booth both came to grief separately in the first two stagings of the race.

Heat 15 saw another nasty clash between Danny Phillips and Connor Coles, as the former locked up on bend three, leaving the Stellar Academy skipper with nowhere to go but to collect him, but luckily both riders were able to walk away relatively unscathed. In the rerun, Cairns shot from the gate to get the better of Coles and Dayle Wood as he rounded off his evening the way he did all night, by taking the chequered flag and reminding everyone why he's one of the most talked about riders in the country.

For the Academy, Coles, Wood and McGurk were solid, as was Matt Marson but the difference really was Mark Parker, who rode steadily all night for a fantastic paid 14 score. Both Lee Harrison and Kyran Lyden could count themselves very unlucky not to score points more befitting of their efforts.

For the away side, Cairns was immaculate but outside of Danny Phillips and to a lesser extent Mickie Simpson, they lacked the firepower to cope with a solid and hardworking Academy side on the night where there was action aplenty.

Academy team manager Scott Wilson was quick to wish all the walking wounded well as he praised his side for their hard work in the bruising encounter and continuing their unbeaten start to their National Development League campaign.

He said: - "The most important thing is that all the guys involved in crashes tonight walked away, best wishes to them, hopefully everyone is okay and they're back riding in the next meeting."

"It was great to get the win, we've given ourselves a lead to take down to Belle Vue which we knew we had to do, there was some good races out there, I'm happy with the win and we move on to the next one.

"I felt that we always had the meeting in hand in terms of getting the win, but Belle Vue made it very difficult for us to pull away, the guests they brought in know Armadale very well which made it difficult for us to get any advantages.

"I had to change thing around a bit, try to use Mark Parker, who was going really well in races where we could get advantages, picking up seconds and thirds, he had a couple of wins too. "I was really pleased with his performance, we got there in the end and overcome what was a tricky Belle Vue side."