Around the Premier League Tracks 2008

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Thursday, 17 April

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The weather claimed another casualty tonight. The match at Redcar, who are no strangers to rain this season, was called off during the afternoon as the wet stuff arrived again. They were due to race Scunthorpe and the call off left the match at Sheffield where the Tigers raced against King’s Lynn in a Premier League match as the sole survivor.


Premier League: Sheffield 48, King’s Lynn 40.

Both teams were at full strength.

King’s Lynn stepped in at short notice to fill the blank in Sheffield’s fixture list caused by Berwick being unable to fulfil their scheduled fixture there. This meant that the Stars were racing their fifth match in seven days and it gave them the opportunity to repair the damage from the home draw with Edinburgh in last night’s match.

The match started with a clutch of five shared heats. Joel Parsons won the opening race for the Tigers but Ricky Ashworth finished at the back behind Shaun Tacey and Tomas Topinka. John Oliver then won the reserves race for the Stars but Simon Lambert suffered an engine failure for 3-3 number 2. The third in heat 3 was won by Kevin Doolan from Andre Compton and Paul Cooper then Lee Smethills passed Simon Lambert to win heat 4 while the two heatleaders, Rusty Harrison and Ben Wilson, had their own battle behind them. Rusty Harrison passed Ben Wilson for third place taking the score to 12-12.

King’s Lynn were on a 1-5 from the gate in heat 5 but Andre Compton passed Shaun Tacey off the second bend and Tomas Topinka off the third to win the race, In heat 6 the deadlock was broken but only by one point. In the first running of the race John Oliver fell as Joel Parsons dived under him with Oliver excluded. Then, in the rerun, it looked as though the Tigers were off to a 5-1 until Ricky Ashworth fell on the last bend of lap 2 causing the race to be stopped and rerun again with just two riders. This time there was a close and exciting race between Joel Parsons and Rusty Harrison which ended with Parsons pipping Harrison on the line for a 3-2. Back came King’s Lynn with a 2-4 in heat 7 which reversed the one point lead in their favour. Kevin Doolan won from Ben Wilson while Kozza Smith took third place from Sam Martin after chasing Ben Wilson in vain for second. Lambert and Tacey made the gate in heat 8 but both were passed by Joel Parsons on the third bend resulting in another shared race with the score moving to 23-24.

Heat 9 produced a classic race with Paul Cooper passing race leader, Rusty Harrison, then Andre Compton also hunting down the King’s Lynn man. However Harrison fought his way back to the front to win the race for a 3-3, the same result as heat 10 when Kevin Doolan and Joel Parsons passed and repassed each other. Parsons lost out by drifting too wide on the last lap to let Doolan through for shared race number eight! The sequence was broken in heat 11 when Sheffield turned the one point lead around with a 4-2 with Ben Wilson winning from Tomas Topinka with Lee Smethills in third. Back came King’s Lynn to turn the lead round once again with a 2-4 from Doolan and Lambert split by Compton taking the score after 12 heats to 35-36.

The see-saw continued in heat 13 with Sheffield scoring a 4-2. Ben Wilson got the better of Topinka off the second bend and although Ashworth also passed the Stars’ number 1 he repassed for second place. The Tigers were now a point in front again but heat 14 saw the end of the visitors’ challenge. John Oliver was deemed to be at fault when his bike lifted causing Paul Cooper to run into him and then hit the fence. Oliver was excluded then in the rerun Simon Lambert fell on the third lap challenging Cooper and Smethills. This resulted in an awarded race with the 5-0 to the home side putting them out of reach of the Stars. In the last race Kevin Doolan was excluded for tape touching and had to go from 15 metres back. In the rerun he hit the fence and was thrown down the back straight. He recovered and the race was awarded as a 4-2 with Andre Compton as first and Tomas Topinka second. The 4-2 gave the Tigers an eight point win on the night.

Scorers: For Sheffield – Andre Compton 12 (5), Joel Parsons 11+1 (5), Lee Smethills 8+1 (5), Ben Wilson 8 (4), Paul Cooper 5+2 (4), Ricky Ashworth 3 (4), Sam Martin 1+1 (3).

For King’s Lynn – Kevin Doolan 12 (5), Tomas Topinka 9+1 (5), Rusty Harrison 6+1 (4), Simon Lambert 5 (5), Shaun Tacey 4+2 (4), John Oliver 3 (4), Kozza Smith 1 (3).