Edinburgh Monarchs v Rye House Rockets

REPORT Friday 14th September 2012, 10:00pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The second match in the Armadale double header followed a similar course to the first.

Rye House took the lead in the reserves race and were still only two behind after five heats.

After he had had a very poor match earlier on, Marcel Helfer was surprisingly the man to pout Monarchs ahead in heat 4 when he gated third and sailed past Jason Bunyan for a 5-1 with Andrew Tully.

The battle between Theo Pijper and James Grieves in heat 5 was the best race of the entire double header, Grieves doing superbly to re-pass round the outside after Pijper had pulled off an inside overtake.

The young Dane Kasper Nielsen looks a stylish prospect but he wasn’t able to prevent a second home 5-1 in heat 6 as Edinburgh gradually took control.

Anders Mellgren became the only rider to head Kevin Wolbert over the two meetings when he took 6 points on his TR in heat 10, but that was a brief respite for the Rockets.

Once again Byron Bekker earned plaudits. He may only have scored 3, but he beat Grieves and Mellgren in successive heats as the visiting heat leaders got into difficulties looking for the outside line.

The points were secured in heat 13 as they had been in the first match, and there was again an awful refereeing decision in heat 14. Bunyan passed Helfer but as the German took the wide line to try to re-pass, Bunyan locked up in his path and stopped, leaving Helfer nowhere to go. Both came down and the German was excluded.

Wolbert and Pijper wrapped up proceedings and the two matches were completed in a fraction over three hours, including the unavoidable gap in the middle.

Full Result Details