2025 – Scotland, Post 3
Saturday evening, about 8pm (before I’ve had my tea!).There were five clean sheets following Friday’s opening day of the Pre 65 Trial with Gary Macdonald, Jimmy Noble, William Tolson, Ben Butterworth and Robin Luscombe staying feet up through the day’ testing sections, a better result for the organising Edinburgh Club when compared to 2024 when there were 13 clean rides on the first day.
The general consensus of opinion was that it had been a hard day for many riders, particularly the ascent and descent mentioned in yesterday’s post over Callert.
The Friday results showed that there had been a number of retirements as there always is, but you have to feel sorry for Jacob Joyce whose Bantam seized before the first section. But what was unfortunate for Jacob became a fortuitous situation when Jim Hugh retired with a recurring painful arm and he generously offered the loan of his Ariel for Jacob to ride on Saturday.
Come the end of Saturday’s trial and the whisper on the ground was that Jimmy Noble was the likely winner of the trial. Lusky lost his clean sheet early on with a three mark loss on Pipeline and whilst at the time of writing we don’t know if any of the other remaining three clean sheets from Friday have maintained that level through Saturday, if they have, then Bobble is still the likely winner due to the tie break where he is the older rider being 56 years old where as Ben, William and Gary are all much younger.
Being an observer this year rather than a general reporter limits the amount of time to quiz riders as to what they know, so at this stage there’s a limit to the information that can be delivered . The section observed was close to the end of the trial so by the time we were back at the car park, many riders had departed for their overnight locations.
However one rumour doing the rounds was the suggestion that this year could well be the final time Pipeline would be used. There has been a lot of ground works on the roads approaching the section and apparently the famous hill could yet be tarmaced as the pipes carrying the water down from the hills to the River Leven may have to be replaced. Only a rumour, and it might be fake news, but if true, you heard it here first.
More soon.