What a difference a day makes, Thursday dawned at Fort William with dry conditions and the whole day was completed without any rain, a first for the 2014 event.
Thursday's awards were sponsored by Thistle Access NDT ltd and Highland Leisure Sport, and the loop certainly brought a few smiles back to riders faces after what for many was a tough day on Wednesday. The scores remained on the whole low and the sun even made an appearance once or twice.
The toughest job for the top riders today was to keep their mind on the job in hand, although the sections wouldn't stretch their abilities too much one small loss of concentration would see them tumble down the leader board and with scores as tight as they are it may be hard to recover come the final day.
Dougie Lampkin, Sam Haslam (Gas Gas), James Dabill (Gas Gas) and Sam Connor (Beta) all completed the 30 sections that made up the day with zero marks lost to maintain their top four positions on the leader board. Jack Sheppard (Beta) and Robert Waite (Beta) also returned a clean score sheet to move them up the table, in Robert Waite's case he moved 10 places to the good. Michael Brown (Gas Gas) lost a little ground on the top four by dropping a slack mark at the second section at Fersit and then 2 marks at what should have been the relatively easy first section at Fassfern 2.
The first at Fassfern 1 took points off Dan Thorpe (Gas Gas), Guy Kendrew (Beta), Gary Macdonald (Sherco) and Ross Danby (Jotagas), the 2 dropped proved to be the only marks that Ross would drop on his early start day. Tom Sagar (Montesa) could have improved his chances of top ten position greatly if he had not dropped a maximum at the very last section of the day at Trotters Burn.
The newcomers award standings show an improved margin for James Stones (Sherco) over Iwan Roberts (Beta) after James turned in a score of 3 to Iwans 8. Eddie Karlsson failed to make up ground on these two after throwing a 5 into the mix at the final section of the day.
Emma Bristow (Sherco) survived a lengthy machine issue that required some catching up but lengthen her lead in the female class over Becky Cook (Beta), but she has some work to do to push herself back into the top 50, which is her stated aim.
Gary Macdonald (Sherco), as expected, leads the Scottish riders class but the gap between Craig Houston (Ossa) and Andy Anderson (Sherco) has shrunk after Andy finished the day with 9 marks fewer than Craig. There is now just 9 marks between the two.
Army man Phil Wiffen on his Sherco has a 50 mark lead in the forces class and will look for two steady days to take the win from fellow Army member Darren Hesleton.
There is a promise of good weather again for Friday, which starts with the riders reaching The Mhuidhe at 8.45am. Most groups are close to the road but these are on single track carriageways so travelling in the same direction ar the trial is the best advice.