Tuesday January 31, 2012 at 4:23pm
On Saturday 28th January the ACU held the annual Awards Presentation at the Park Inn Hotel in Northampton. During the course of the day nearly 700 people attended to celebrate the achievements of both Youth and Adult riders from all disciplines of the ACU. The Youth Awards took place over the lunchtime and highlighted the hard work of the future stars from the sports of Trials, Motocross, Quads and Grass Track.
The evening Awards Dinner hosted by Peter York from Coventry Bees speedway, focused on another great season for all riders within the ACU in their chosen discipline. 2011 saw no less than two World Champions crowned in the form of Jack Sheppard in Trials and Chaz Davies in Road Racing being crowned the World Supersport champion. There were also no less than seven European Champions.
One of the most prestigious awards of the Evening went to Jack Sheppard, the youngster from Ipswich collected the Pinhard Trophy having successfully captured the FIM Youth Trials Cup, UEM Junior 125cc Trial Cup and British Expert A-Best 125cc Award. Sheppard’s achievements were made even harder with Jack having suffered with a wrist injury all season. Jack was on hand to collect the Award from Tony Lloyd of the Sunbeam MCC.
Other stand out winners were young Jonathan Walker and Daniel McCanney from Enduro after collecting a total of twelve titles between them, including Daniel wining the UEM Junior E2/E3 Championship and finishing second overall in the UEM Enduro Championship. Both Daniel and Jonathan along with Jack Rowlands were members of the winning team at the UEM Junior Trophy De Nations and finished third overall in the Junior team at the ISDE in Finland with Alex Rockwell.
General Secretary Gary Thompson said, “The ACU Awards is always a special occasion, it is the one time we can all get together to celebrate the achievements of our Champions and Award winners in all our sporting disciplines under one roof. It is always good to see so many of our Youth competitors, our Champions of the future look so proud as they walk to the stage to collect their well-deserved awards”.