A second attempt will be made to get the two young visiting Swedish riders onto Mildura’s Olympic Park Speedway this coming Sunday night, the 12^th December, when Mildura Motor Cycle Club re-runs the meeting which was postponed, due to poor conditions two weeks ago.

Club officials are hoping that the recent rains of last fortnight and again this week, will abate and allow the second meeting scheduled for the Mildura season to be conducted.

The Swedish pair, Pontus Apsgren and Ricky Kling, were due to have their next ride in Queensland, but have been able to stay in Mildura, as the guests of the Sedgmen family, to fulfill their duties in the “A” grade solo division, which will include both Sedgmen brothers, Ryan and Justin, as well as the “in-form” Brenton Barnfield and fellow local Tom Hedley. The four Mildura boys can hold their own in any company, so Mildura patrons will be keen to see how they all go against some additional first class opposition. This grade of racing will be exciting as the visitors, who are accomplished riders, come to terms with the tight corners of Olympic Park against the home ground advantage of the three Mildura Club members. Patrons again are expecting big things in the future from the newest contingent of local riders, so the pace will be furious right from the start of proceedings.

As usual the Mildura Sidecar competition will be savage, especially as last week’s filed will now be bolstered by the addition of the very fast Warren Monson / Deven Gates combination. Monson was on Australian Superbike duty last week with the conduct of a significant Six hour Endurance at Phillip Island, which had all three Waters brothers, Josh, Brodie and Nick, working hard on the bitumen.

Byrne Gates / Mick O’Loughlin have fixed their overheating problems of the Opening meet and Jason Bradshaw, with new passenger, Steve Behsmann will be looking to not dropping their guard against Bradshaw’s former passenger, in Simon Cohrs, who now rides with his brother Mark in the chair. The Cohrs combination scored a significant second placing in their first meeting ahead of the former Victorian Champion and celebrated long and hard in front of an amused and rejoicing crowd on the back straight of Olympic Park. Cohrs has always been a jovial individual and does know how to celebrate, but maybe the gloves could be off in the future as all of the Mildura riders fine tune their machines and their performance in readiness for the major Title meetings which will be on all participants earlier than they think.

The “Dad’s Army” team of Chris Holmes and Neale Hancock are riding into fine form, as are the “never give in” team of Andrew O’Rourke and Jason Mayes. The “Rooky” has taken some good scalps in the last two seasons and is looking for bigger things in 2011.

Clint Mayes, with new passenger, Andrew Summerhayes, have a great start for a new combination at the season Opener, coming home in third place overall. Mayes always has fast machinery and the new team already looks to have matters sorted trackside.  Dale Milner / Nick O’Brien are also a consistent pair, although they will have worked hard, with Bryan Gathercole to right any possible wrongs possibly caused to their machinery by their “off highway” sojourn last Saturday night. After the Renmark meeting they hit an unexpected wall of water over the Sturt Highway just west of Merbein South. Gathercole’s vehicle came to a very abrupt stop in the floodwaters, but not before having the trailer “jack-knifing” and facing both vehicle and trailer back the way from whence they came; the bikes obviously having a wild ride.

Wheat farmers, Scott and Kane Munro, will not be engaged in harvesting their now ruining crop so will be keen to just get trackside and have some fun. The Munro boys are solid performers, who always take good points off sometimes more fancied teams due to just being consistent on the track.

Corey Gates and Adon Pearce had to wait two extra weeks for their Olympic Park debut, but the breeding is such that Corey will not be troubled either by the wait, nor the competition company that the team will be riding against.

The Quads section has been most entertaining over the last two seasons, but now Olympic Park fans are being treated to some fine performances as the riders are fine tuning suspension and engines to the anti clockwise way of going on the track. Three generations of the Mills family are engaged in the four wheeled division and will mix it hard amongst the eight quads in the field. The Quads guys will ride Handicap events all night, with the feature race being a “Black flag” race to end their night. The format of the black flag race is that after a few laps, the rider at rear of field then is excluded with the black flag, until there is only one rider remaining, who is the winner.

Olympic Park gates will open at 5:00pm, with a Junior meeting to start at 6:15pm, following senior practice. The senior meeting will commence at 7:30 pm sharp.

The Club advises that there is a full catering service provided and that there must be No BYO by law.

Written by Brendon Gledhill

Download the press release: SECOND TRY FOR SWEDES