FOURS ABANDONED

NEWS Sunday 2nd August 2015, 6:20pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

The annual Fours was abandoned this afternoon after two heats of the final had been raced, and will be restaged as a full meeting on a date to be advised.

The teams involved will be Edinburgh, Somerset, Newcastle and Ipswich.

All supporters will want to send best wishes to Lewis Kerr after the incident which caused the meeting to be halted. We have no definite information on Lewis's condition at this stage.

(For updated position see BSPA website)

Our unlucky man was Justin Sedgmen who fell heavily in both the semi and the final. The first one was due to a lost chain when leading comfortably, and he's not sure what happened in the opening heat of the final when the track was pretty wet.

He's ok though. "I never crash!" he said afterwards. "In the final, I just couldn't see."

We would have sailed through the semi had Sedgy not lost that chain. Craig had won the first race in a time just 0.4 outside the track record, and Kevin took second behind Covatti in heat 2.

Had Justin won heat 3 we would have been on easy street for the rest of the semi but when 3 turned to 0, we were plunged back into the mix.

Erik struggled with his gating and took just a point from heats 4 and 6, so it was just as well that Cookie blasted round everyone to win heat 5 in another very fast time.

Heat 7 was rerun a few times but Sedgmen kept his cool to win and we were pretty much there, confirmed by a point for Wolbert in the last race.

Qualifiers from the second semi were Newcastle and (just) Somerset ahead of Rye House with Glasgow a poor fourth.

The final started with Sedgy's fall, then an excellent second for Erik who led heat two most of the way till caught by Danny King.

In the unlucky heat 3 race leader Kerr may have locked up slightly with Grajczonek running into him. Fortunately Craig Cook spotted it early and put his bike down to avoid the mayhem.

An air ambulance was called and the decision to abandon was a sensible one.