CLUB NEWS: Norwich Stars Round-up

Sunday July 17th should have seen the Stars in team action with a Norfolk derby at Hethersett in South-East Division 2 and the Youth League but the extremely hot weather caused the postponement of those matches ant these will provisionally take place on Sunday 18th September
The 2nd British Youth & Junior League national round took place at Wednesfield on Saturday 23rd July and saw Will Blackmore take 2nd place in the Under 12’s B Final, Shaun Kell take 2nd place in the Under 14’s A Final and Tom Blackmore finish 3rd in the Under 18’s A Final.
4 days later Eaton Park was the venue for round 3 of the Norfolk Grand Prix series for Under 16, Girls and Senior categories. The Norwich involvement was in the Senior event where Tom took the win in the A Final with Jamie Medler 3rd and Shaun 4th and Rory Freeman taking the B Final by default.
The final 3 days of July saw the European Championships take place and day 1 saw Paddy Wenn & Steve Copping in action at Cookson Park, Sheffield in the 2nd Over 40’s Semi-Final. Paddy finished 3rd with 17 points to qualify for the final whereas Steve could only score 7 points. The following day saw Shaun ride in the 2nd Junior Semi-Final at Astley & Tyldesley but he finished in a tie for 13th on 9 points. Paddy & Shaun then donned Ireland shirts for the European Open Nations Cup with paddy scoring 4 points and Shaun 3 as Ireland finished 4th with 24 points. The European Over 40’s Final took place on the final day and Paddy finished 12th with 9 points which included a race win.
Saturday August 6th saw Norwich welcome the EuroVets to Eaton Park for Round 5 of their series. The 18 riders (across all categories) were split into 2 groups with the top 4 scorers in each age category advancing to their respective A Finals. Paddy and Steve were drawn to ride in Group 2. Steve bit the dust on the parade lap but after taking a few minutes to recover he raced on, scoring 10 points and winning the Over 35 & Over 40’s B Finals by default. Those results leave Steve in 10th place overall in the Over 35’s and 8th overall in the Over 40’s. Paddy overcame a nasty tumble in his 2nd ride to score 18 points and finish 4th in the A Final. This puts him 2nd overall in the Over 50’s, 3 points behind the leader.
Hethersett was the venue for Round 5 of the Norfolk Grand Prix for the Under 8, Under 10 & Under 13 categories. 3 Norwich riders took part and all 3 reached the A Finals in their respective events. Stanley Budds was 4th in the Under 10’s with Will winning the Under 13’s event and Zachary Eastwood taking 3rd