The Richmond Motor Club staged a cliffhanger Youth C and D championship trial at Wensley on Sunday and the results testified the fact the it was maybe the toughest test of young trial riders this year. The scores were consistent with long sections and a fine mixture of streams, rocky crags and, fortunately a dry day otherwise the grassy areas would prove drastic, Sure the scores were up a little higher than usual but Harry Hemingway’s score line read five stops on his Oset while challenger and championship class leader Henry Stephenson in Youth D Small Wheels stopped twice and the rest of his sixty one penalties centred on footing and single marks.
In terms of best laps Harry Hemingway’s second and third laps were a miserly seven and eight, Stephenson eighteen score on lap two was the best of the rest.
The championship tables after Sunday’s event at Park Gate Farm, Wensley puts the Liversedge boy fifteen points ahead of Little Little Hemmo but the East Keswick youngster, Dan’s boy missed the rain lashed Tow Tops trial in the Lake District so has no drop score to weigh on his mind. Consistent Harry Turner and Oset’s Dominic Horne have scored every round so the final outcome centres round who does what at Bumpy and Sevenston. The sixth and seventh sections that tracked the stream in the East Meadow did the damage. The seventh played a major role in all classes but the left turn at the top of the sixth for the Class D boy posed a problem. Get through the narrow slot and the final loose gravelly climb was a straight burn affair.
In Class D Medium Wheels Brighton’s Jack Dance was showing the locals how to ride the sections. He faltered three times but was pushing his Gas Gas all the way, sounding like a gear up on his rivals which paid dividends on the loose small stone base of the stream beds. Appleyard Beta teamster Jacob Smith and local starlet Elliott Laws were near. Smith signed off with a fifteen score while Elliot posted his best lap first time round, and he was not hanging about either, Surrey’s Dale Freeman was consistent but his first card carried four fives and that opener took the edge of the his attack. Dale took another four maximums but two were at the end of the lap, and those sections took a big haul of marks.
Class C Medium wheels was another Edward Earle championship points gathering exercise. The Addingham youngster headed Bradford’s Charlie Mosley and Scarborough’s Elliott Woodhall. The best lap was down to Mosley on his final lap when just a trace of moisture headed in from the west carried by an almost gale force wind that prevailed all day and certainly unsettled some riders at the crucial moments. James Marshland started well with an eighteen but his second and third laps were well over his rivals.
Only a dozen were involved main event, Class C Standard Wheels and it was more or less on the cards that Newton Abbot eleven year old Billy Green, no not Truro, as wrongly stated by some clown who wrote the prelim last week, would establish command riding his RCM Beta. The Devon boy knew though what was coming out of Whitwick, Leicestershire, Daniel Slack, who won the damp and dismal Tow Tops on May 11. The eleven year old who attends Holy Cross School in his home village missed runner-up once, at Long Framlington when Joe Faunthorpe snatched the second step of the rostrum. On the scores on the first two laps Joe as on course to scuttle both front runners with a brace of eights. On lap three Joe was on a burn with a dab in Hannah Richardson’s opening gully section another couple on the twisting rock and grass climb at the second then a clean run to section seven where the big step stopped all the class. Only Green and Faunthorpe got onto to top step only to slide back down the incline. Slack footed the maze of rocks at nine so that put him on twenty nine while Joe was on twenty six, then he stopped in nine where Green footed and failed the final section but hung onto runner-up a dab ahead of Green. Some result, So that puts Devon and Leicester at the top of the table with Faunthorpe trailing his pal Jacob Snowdon by five championship points but all is not lost because Joe missed Tow Tops and that drop score is history.
The penultimate round heads for Bumpy Ltd Howden Clough estate on September 15.