Scotland Part 11
Monday, May 13, 4.15 pm
This will be the final personal blog from the Scottish, started on Monday afternoon at home and with the very appropriate words sent to me by a friend, which I will repeat verbatim:
“I enjoyed my visits to the 6 days and watched days 1, 5 and 6.
I have been enjoying your writing blogs and wanted to pass on a couple of reflections:
From a sporting perspective this was a vibrant and well fought competition in both the male and, pleasingly, female categories. A lot of riders in contention with higher than recent years marks lost, and uncertainty until the last day. Wet weather day nicely messed it up too.
From an event perspective well done to the organisers and I felt the different last day worked. Slightly disconcerting to hear about dwindling of land access- this was just hearsay rather than any official line. The future which might be precariously pitched, has to be delicately managed.”
In previous years I have left my accommodation, then gone to watch a group before heading south, but this year, because of a need to be home on Saturday to make way for some landscaping contractors starting work at home on Monday, it looks as if I missed a good last day opening group at Fassfern.
But that’s not the end of the world and as a whole it was again a very enjoyable week for both the Classic trial and the Six Days. There is an enormous amount of work in organising these events and those who put in the time need to be thanked and congratulated, and speaking with the riders, they all appreciate what has been offered.
Perhaps surprisingly, I never heard a word of criticism about generally shorter routes and slightly fewer sections, if the programme is correct and reflects the number of sections ridden, this year there were 22 fewer than the 180 which is the norm from past years. Having said that, it did seem to me that many of the individual sections were greater in length than in the past, so perhaps the thinking was give fewer sections, but make them longer to take the marks.
Harking back to an earlier blog when I carried out a Vox Pop survey on Sunday in the parc ferme, most of those questioned also asked me who I thought would win. I said Jack Price every time, that at least I got right, and the reason I went for Pricey was because of his tremendous win in last year’s Scott. I just thought he was really up for a great ride which he certainly achieved. I was also delighted to see that Emma Bristow again took the ladies award by such a narrow margin against the ever competitive Laia Sanz. Alice Minta also had a most impressive week to my mind.
Now to finish my personal views from the past week or so in Scotland, the finishing positions of the Northern Centre based riders:
39th Tom Swindlehurst 119 marks; 47 Steve Dixon 131; 60 Richard Gaskell 162; 65 Joel Gowan 172; 70 Joe Hiley 193; 85 Jamie Bingley 228; 92 Jack Dixon 246; 100 James Johnson 260; 115 Dan Gaskell 297; 127 Nigel Birkett 320; 169 Ethan King 389; 182 Steve Stamper 422; 200 John Holland 459; 204 Drew Morten 467; 221 Richard Fisher 511.
Well done guys.
Lead picture: Joe Hiley had a quietly impressive week and his 70th place was excellent