All season in one day

Well what a season that turned out to be. Non-stop action, barely a minute to catch your breath, not knowing what would happen next as, after over a decade of trying the Bandits went racing in October.

All season in one day. But one not without its challenges.

You see the problem with unforeseen circumstances is … well you can’t foresee them. You can have a Plan B, hell you can have Plans up to and including ZXVL, but covering every eventuality? Impossible.

Up to around 6.20 on Wednesday evening the Bandits’ management was probably fairly confident that the hoops, hurdles and challenges of getting the 2020 British under-21 Final on track were in the rear view mirror.

They may even have tentatively relaxed ready to enjoy the night. Shielfield Park’s remodelled track was ready to host its first competitive event 13 months after the old configuration staged its last.

Instead of appearing: “2020 * Event not staged” Berwick stepped in to run the championship for the third successive year. At the time there was an outside chance that the pandemic would loosen its grip enough to allow a Covid-19 compliant crowd into the stadium.

That was not to be so instead ATPI became title sponsors, Visit Berwick.Com powered the evening, 23 heats were all sponsored. As were individual race jackets – all 18 quickly snapped with Leon Flint, Kyle Bickley and Anders Rowe so popular that, GP style, they each had five colour-coded covers.

Fans denied the opportunity to freeze their whatsits off in person were invited to snuggle up at home and watch via a livestream. For free if they wanted. Tune into Youtube, pay what you think the show was worth was the innovative offer from the management.

Tapes Up Productions would provide multi-camera whistles and bells coverage, club legend Kev Doolan keeping Premier Sports commentator Dave Goddard company in the booth. Up to date 17,000 have viewed the footage according to YouTube.

So far so simple but few can be unaware that things didn’t go quite alright on the night sparking howls of outrage, a great deal of scorn and not a little vitriol from social media.

Some even waited for the meeting to start before holding forth on what was wrong. How we were stupid to have not known that a 40amp fuse would blow – didn’t anyone think to test the lights beforehand (yes and, guess what, they worked, until they didn’t). How we should have negotiated a magical rubber extension to the planning curfew. How our straights were too narrow (proved by the fact that someone had measured them on Google Maps).

This is the blinkered binary thinking I’ve complained about in the past. Anything not perfect is rubbish. No shades of grey – or colour for that matter. No they railed it was a scam (despite being free), a con (ditto), they wanted their money back (despite being invited not to pay, if at all, until after the event), Berwick shouldn’t hold these meetings anyway (even though nobody else wanted to). No-one could find the stream after the initial link was blown by the outage (even though it has been accessed 17,000 times and counting).

Truth be told it was the usual suspects following well-rehearsed scripts. They seem to hate British speedway and those who run it with a vengeance and are not prepared to offer even the most grudging of praise to anyone trying something different.

If ignorance really is bliss then some of the happiest people on the planet must inhabit speedway’s message boards.

Much more considered voices later in the week provided the sort of reflective, constructive and useful feedback which will prove useful for any subsequent streamed events.

The nitty gritty of what happened after the lights went out have been comprehensively covered by those who worked hardest to fix the problem. Suffice to say that within half an hour super sparky David Johnston and supporting cast had identified the fault, a replacement fuse sourced, fitted and restored power.

In normal circumstances we would have rolled just a smidge after 7pm but with this a view-from-home even fried production equipment had to be rebuilt, rebooted and restored, albeit without many pre-programmed whistles and dented bells. That meant further delay and, ultimately, a losing battle with the 10pm curfew. In the end we saw 20 heats, the classic individual format for most of speedway’s nine decades. But no semi or grand final.

On track super Dan Bewley brought the form which has seen him go from hirsute promising Brit to Extraliga and Elitserien points’ machine, fourth in the world at Under-21 and international selection shoe-in. He’s now British under-21 champ and the fastest man round Shielfield Mark III – albeit still a tenth of a second slower than Craig Cook’s Mark II track record.

Still a less than stellar gater, the way he patiently stalked, tested, probed and eventually roared round the outside of Leon Flint suggested Dan has learned well in the rarefied atmosphere of Poland and Sweden this summer.

Contrast that to Drew Kemp’s big handful of throttle in the first running of what turned out to be the podium deciding heat 16. I’ll never criticise a racer but the speed he roared past Leon in front of The Ducket seemed to have odds considerably less than 50/50 of making it to turn four upright. That one miscalculation, allowed Anders Rowe – another who has made Poland a home from home this summer – into third spot.

And then there was Leon. What can you say about the local hero? Still just 17, just passed his driving test. Just number two in Britain. Brilliant.

Dan Gilkes also showed that he can gate but a desire to head for the white line meant that he came off second best to first Rowe and then Bewley – who were both running for the dirt. Two heavy tumbles eventually ruled him out as a precaution after heavy knocks to the head but he is underlined three times in green ink as “one to follow”.

With Dan now graduating to the senior ranks it would be no surprise to see a Flint, Kemp, Rowe podium again next year.

Sport is all about “what-ifs” and the big one from Wednesday is what if Kemp had not hit the deck – or cleared the track for that matter – and Leon had stayed on the inside line.  Would even dynamic Dan have managed to haul in both Drew and Leon in what could have remained of that epic heat 16.

What if they had all lined up again in the grand final? Would the result have been the same?

And what if there had been a crowd in the stadium? What if the packed posh seats had collectively inhaled to drag Leon down the home straight and the back straight massif exhaled an extra 10mph at his back?

Would he have kept Kemp and Bewley, Rowe for that matter, at bay?

It deserved a crowd. All the riders did, even those throwing a leg over a bike for virtually the first time and understandably off the pace.

Gilkes’ efforts would have been warmly received, his return lonely walk to the pits accompanied by sympathetic applause; Bewley’s heat six time greeted by a collective intake of breath followed by a growing buzz around the stadium.

There were enough ooh, ah and WTF moments to warm the cockles even on a late October night in Berwick, hopefully it all came across well enough for those watching at home.

Those who made it happen pulled off a minor miracle. Those who decided it could happen in the first place defied the odds and achieved something unbelievable. They’ve set the benchmark high and along the way suffered and overcome setbacks which will allow those following an easier ride in the future. They deserve our gratitude, our praise, our encouragement, dammit it our donations. It was a monumental effort and one which proves that no matter how hard you work you don’t always get the luck you deserve.

They chose to take on the challenge of staging the meeting in the first place and stuck with it as crowds were banned and first the weather and then the curse of Tesla, Faraday and Franklin threatened to derail their plans. As a result once again the final speedway meeting of a Berwick season left us pining for the first of the next.

That’ll be April 2021 then … barring unforeseen circumstances.