Loughborough Trials club ran a club championship trial on Sunday 18/10/15 at its Scalford venue and the route winners all gave a master class to their peers. Sam Gent (hard), Andy Butt (middle) and Sam Mann (white) were all clear winners making tricky conditions look easy.
Scalford has a reputation of being a difficult venue but on Sunday the club was rewarded by a better than normal entry at this venue and the section plotting team had done an outstanding job. 8 sections set out in the dry on Saturday needed only one or two alterations before the trial started to take account of overnight rain and provide a challenging but achievable and enjoyable day for the 40 riders who turned out. With a number of other events taking regular Loughborough club riders away the club was overjoyed to see such a good showing.
On the hard route Sam Gent lost just 17 marks, well ahead of Joe Collins and Steve Bird. Sam had a uncharacteristic 5 on the tricky climb of section 8 watched over by Pete Jones who was hoping everyone would get finished so he could make the rapid dash to Stoke Speedway to mechanic for one of the team riders in the evening! Sam had only had a couple of dabs on his previous 4 visits to this section so was it a lack of concentration?
Only Tom Bishop took up the 50/50 and his result shows he is close to making a full blown effort on the hard route soon. On the middle route Andy Butt made light work of the sections with only the tight turn at the end of Richard Hodges section 1 taking some time to master. He came home well ahead of Stewart Dickinson with Tim Gent and Nigel Wilson tying for third with Tim getting the non on most cleans. Tim was lucky his call for a baulk on section 5 fell on Jim Yorks kinder side, this strict observer not showing such leniency to all calls for clemency.
Sam Mann made easy work of the white route with two miserly dabs, well in front of Alan Jones with Gary Kirtley-Paine and speedway referee Jim Lawrence spending too much time discussing this weekends final GP in Australia and not concentrating on the job in hand. Gary getting the nod by a single mark.
Once again the club put on a trail focused on the clubman but with something to test the experts and a good ride out for the novices, next event is November 15th, venue to be confirmed.
Club website www.loughboroughtrialsclub.co.uk