Location: Birmingham Cycle Speedway, Perry Bar, Birmingham
Event: 27 October 2012
Report: John Heard /Snowdon Sports
A determined and strong Wednesfield outfit secured a comfortable victory over a Birmingham side who were missing virtually an entire team through work commitments in their latest BCTG Elite League fixture on Saturday.
Wednesfield opened with two comfortable 7-3 wins and in heat 3 Aris and Griffiths lined up against the Heard and Timms pairing. But there was disaster for the home team as Heard moved at the start – dropping his first Elite points in four matches.
In the three-man re-run Timms tried a pass on Griffiths which resulted in him sitting on the centre green – he decided to stay there and the Wednesfield boys bagged a 7-0 against the Monarchs top two riders.
Two further 7-3 wins for Wednesfield and the crowd were heard practicing their seven times table as the Aces had five consecutive seven-pointers from five heats – 35 points.
Heard and Timms were out again in heat 6 and this time it was Timms’ turn to move at the tapes leaving Heard off grid 4 – The Aces gated, but in the best race of the afternoon Heard reeled in Wheeler before blasting round the outside of him and repeating the feat on Jewkes on lap 3.
It was still a Wednesfield heat advantage but they hadn’t managed another seven-pointer and Birmingham had scored more than three in a race.
Normal service was resumed in heat 8, 7-3 Wednesfield, before Heard beat Jewkes and the very impressive Troy Allen in heat 9 to make the half time score 27 to Birmingham and 59 to Wednesfield.
Chris Timms won his only race of the afternoon in heat 10 beating Wheeler and the equally impressive Matt Haddock. Aris & Griffiths gained another seven-point haul in heat 11 and then Paul Timms got the better of Troy Allen in heat 12 to become only the third Birmingham rider to take points off an Ace.
Paul Heard won heats 13 and 16 against friend and rival Ben Mould but Birmingham’s only other success was in heat 18 was when Chris Timms rode Ricki Johnson round at the back to grab a 5-5 with Steve Hodgkinson getting second place behind Aris.
In the Elite League Match Race Championship holder Paul Heard won the toss against Ben Mould, took grid 2 and raced away to another impressive win, but that was scant consolation for a Birmingham Club that only four months ago went to Ashmore Park in front of the Sky cameras and beat the Aces in their own back yard.
Results:
Birmingham 64: Paul Heard 16, Steve Hodginson 11, Paul Timms 10, Chris Timms 8+1, Phil Widdas 7, Richard Stevenson 6, Reece Winwood and Dylan Hexley both 3.
Wednesfield 112: Ben Mould 16+2, Matt Haddock 16+3, Troy Allen 16+1, Mark Griffiths 14+2, Chris Jewkes 13+1, Lee Aris 13+3, Ricki Johnson 12+2, Gavin Wheeler 12+1.
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British Cycling would like to thank the organising team, officials and everyone else who helped promote this event. Our sport could not exist without the hundreds of people, many of them unpaid volunteers, who put in many hours of hard work running events, activities and clubs.
