COOK EXCELS ON A MIXED NIGHT AT BERWICK

NEWS Saturday 9th April 2011, 10:55pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

We had the first three race winners at Berwick, then slumped to a horrible SIX successive 1-5s before recovering to finish with a semi-respectable score.

The standout rider of the meeting was Craig Cook who is making such an impression in our ranks. He won four races, and was desperately unlucky when taking a TR in heat 7. He failed to get his bike started and had to go off 15 metres on a bike loaned by Kevin Wolbert, making a bold bid but coming third.

Other than Craig, Kevin Wolbert rode well enough, and there were flashes from Andrew, Matthew (who started with a heavy tumble) and reserve guest Kyle Howarth. The youngster was unlucky to spin off in heat 14 when we were on a 5-1.

We had eight race winners, and but for the misfortunes suffered by Wethers, Cook and Howarth may well have been in the hunt for a point.

Ashley Morris didn't get to grips with things, and more worryingly nor did Kalle Katajisto who rode extremely poorly. He conceded three of the six 5-1s in that bad spell and a performance like that unbalances the whole side.

The track looked quite deep at the start but in fact proved to be easy enough to ride. There was very little overtaking unless you count heat 4 in which Kalle briefly led but sat on the inside at slow speed as the home riders raced by.

The pattern of scoring was very odd ? three shared heats, then six 1-5s which had us looking down and out, then two 5-1s gained to get back in the hunt.

Andrew Tully pulled his socks up for his final two rides, and took a 4 points from his TR in heat 12 before we finished off with race wins for Wolbert (heat 13) and Cook (heats 14 and 15).

We sure are glad that Cookie isn't a Comet any more!