PREVIEW: Lots of racing, but will we beat the weather?
It’s another busy weekend on the Cycle Speedway calendar. However, with lots of rain forecast all over the country, it could cause problems to already over saturated tracks.
Saturday sees round two of the British Youth and Junior competition in all four regions. Birmingham host the Midlands round at Perry Bar, British Final hosts Bury hold the Northern region’s round. That leaves Great Blakenham taking the South East round and Poole hosting the South and South Wales round.
All meetings are due to start at 12pm, except Bury, which is 1pm, according to the British Cycling website. Hopefully BYJL will survive the downpours and we’ll have another weekend of great junior racing.
Following the BYJL at Great Blakenham, the second round of the South East GP takes place.
Also on Saturday, TLI promoted Eurovets is hosted at Horspath. It’s the first round of Eurovets this season and with high numbers of participants expected, it could be the best and most competitive series yet. The meeting is still going ahead, as of 10:30pm this evening.
On Sunday, the big guns are out again in the Elite League. Wednesfield travel to Horspath for a top of the table clash. With the Polish league having fixtures this weekend, it seems unlikely Horspath will be wielding a team of similar strength to the one that travelled to Sheffield last time out. Wednesfield are full of confidence after brushing Poole aside at Ashmore Park and will be looking to a big performance to take the points in Oxfordshire.
After they proved with the 2012 British Final (pictured), Newport probably stand the best chance of beating the weather on Sunday. The Welsh side host a Sheffield team big in spirit, who no doubt felt hard done to when they came away with nothing after their epic encounter with Horspath. Newport will be looking to take their first Elite League points against the Stars, after proving a few weeks ago that they’re ready and going to compete at this level.
The final match up sees Ipswich make the long journey down to Poole. The young Eagles side will be up for trying to make it two wins on the bounce. They are against a Poole side who are likely, as with the Wednesfield match, to not be as strong as last season again this weekend. That said, if British Champion Thomas Reed and a few other notable experienced absentees from the Aces meeting are available for this clash, the Dorset team will be more than capable of a big home win.
All Elite League matches start at 2pm, don’t forget to follow the teams on Twitter, for the best chance of live updates.
Other Regional fixtures are taking place on Sunday. Northumbria are programmed to take on Glasgow in the Northern League and Hull are hosting the Northern 4s and GP2.
Finally, although not this weekend, Ipswich have their club championship on Monday night, tapes up at 6:45pm.
Good luck to all riders and teams this weekend, hopefully the weather will hold off. If you do have a postponement to report please email us and we’ll publish it on 33/18 News.