Scotland Part 5
Sunday afternoon, May 5
I spent the first couple of hours this morning looking for the final results from the Pre 65 trial but was unable to find them, so wrote Scotland Part 4 with nothing to go on other than what I had picked up yesterday afternoon.
Went down to the West End car park for about 10.15 to see what was happening relating to the main SSDT, and immediately heard that no Pre 65 official results were available. It’s easy to be critical and to make comment when I wasn’t at the presentation, but enough folks said that the results prepared for the presentation were, somewhat inaccurate, to say the least. There were claims that a large number of riders had missed sections, riders who vehemently denied that fact, and some retirements were noted of riders who believed, perhaps rightly, that they had not retired nor were late at the finish.
However, what wasn’t in any doubt was the result of the first few. As we suggested, Dan Clarke took the win for the second time ( his first was in 2016) with a single mark lost, Ben Butterworth was second, also on one, with William Tolson third on 3.
Peter Blowers Lewis Johnson
Northern Centre guys were:19th Will Brockbank 11; 21 Carl Batty 14; 26 Lewis Johnson 16; 59 Paul Norman 31; 75 Angus Jenkinson 42; 80 Chris Myers 44; 88 Peter Blowers 47; 89 Martin Jackson 49; 114 Michael Batty 68; 120 Nathan Britton 78; 139 Robert Dobson 97; 150 Neil Buckley 128.
So it was not the most satisfactory finish to the two days and the final results that were considered accurate were published on Facebook early Sunday afternoon, but, hey, let’s not let an administration problem spoil the whole fantastic affair.
Funny how one thinks about things, at least from a journalistic point of view, but I decided to do a Vox Pop from the West End car park as scrutineering took place, which gave me the opportunity to ask as many people as possible, a simple question, “who will win the trial next week”?
I collared 114 people with the question, and the results are: Billy Green 47; Dougie Lampkin 25, Jack Price 11, Harry Hemingway 10 with the remainder spread between Toby Martin, Jack Peace, Tom Minta, Jamie Galloway, James Dabill and Gary McDonald in no particular order.
Is that a surprise, up to you to decide but what is certain is that in all those names, arguably all could clean every section in the trial, but it’s not as easy as that as we all know. So many things, can, and do happen and not until Saturday night can we see who will be taking the JR Alexander winner’ s trophy. My bet is on ???????????? – not telling! One think has surprised me is that nobody mentioned Michael Brown as their recommendation.
Then of course it was off to the Main Street in Fort William for the riders parade where the lead picture is of Nigel Birkett riding his 51st Scottish alongside Steve Stamper.