Redcar Bears v Edinburgh Monarchs

This draw against a highly placed rival team was a triumph for team spirit and hard work, two of the main ingredients of our success so far.

On a dusty and quite difficult track, several riders had problems and some of the bigger-name home riders definitely did not fancy it if they didn’t make the start. They also didn’t seem to fancy putting themselves forward for the last heat decider, and that was left to High Skidmore and Carl Wilkinson (who had already more than done their job).

No such problem on our side with Craig Cook and Claus Vissing both eager beavers, out early to check the gate positions.

For much of the night, it looked as though we would not get more than a point out of the match, even though we started strongly with a 5-1 from Craig and Derek over Ostergaard and Skidmore.

Derek had a bumpy ride but held on under pressure.

We then conceded two disappointing 5-1s after poor starts, and it was already clear that it was hard to make headway from the back. The dust was flying.

We shared a couple of heats, Craig winning heat 5, and with Claus ahead in heat 6 we got a break when Ostergaard packed up and gifted Mitchell a point.

Straight away Theo and Max trailed again and

clearly they needed to gate better. Heats 8 to 11 were all shared, with a third win for Craig in heat 11, and also one for Theo in heat 10.

We dropped to 8 behind in heat 12, Theo splitting Wilkinson and Dyer, so we had a lot to do over the last three heats. We had the men for the job.

Claus won heat 13, and Craig off the difficult gate 1, passed Ostergaard to half the deficit. Jozsef and Max worked hard to keep Wilkinson at the back in heat 14 leaving us needing a 5-1 from the big two for the draw.

Craig took the harder gate one and we saw the race of the night as he harried Wilkinson, eventually pulling off the pass going into the last lap for the 5-1.