COOKIE'S OPEN

NEWS Friday 2nd August 2013, 11:16pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Craig Cook was an outstanding and deserved winner of the David Harrison Ford Scottish Open Championship for 2013, heading home Patrick Hougaard and Theo Pijper who had a great battle for second, plus three-time winner Rory Schlein who was snapping at their heels.

As top home rider and current Premier League Riders' Champion, Craig might have been expected to take the title, but he admitted afterwards that he had been having concerns about his form.

"I really needed to win that," he said, "because things had been going down a bit for me recently. I'm very happy to have beaten a quality field."

There's no doubt that Craig was the dominant man in the meeting. He won his first four races, including a really tough passing battle with team mate Claus Vissing in heat 15.

Then off gate four in heat 17 he was baulked at the first corner, and had to work very hard to grab third from Kevin Wolbert.

That gave Craig 13 points, top qualifier for the final, and the others to go straight to the last race were Peterborough's powerful Patrick Hougaard, who won his last three heats, and the ever-canny Theo Pijper who rode well all night.

We saw a thrilling semi-final, a great battle between Rory Schlein and Richie Worrall, who are team mates at King's Lynn. They gave no quarter and Rory came out on top.

Cook took gate one in the final even though that had not been a very successful gate during the evening. His dad said "He didn't want to let one of the other top riders get inside him at the first bend."

Craig in fact made a great start and although he didn't pull away too much, he concentrated on making no mistakes to earn the plaudits of the crowd, the vast majority of whom went home happy.

Amongst the rest of the field, Max Fricke (7) and Henning Bager (7) can be happy with their performances. Bager started the evening with a tapes exclusion.

Kevin Wolbert was expected to be amongst the leaders but finished on a disappointing 6. Home reserve Mitchell Davey, given a late chance, managed to take the scalps of Fricke and Bager and this might help his sagging confidence.

However Jozsef Tabaka, who failed to score, has to be concerned about his form.

The news of Ricky Ashworth's crash at Scunthorpe overshadowed everything and we join the Speedway world in wishing Ricky, a great racer, a speedy recovery.