Tuesday July 12, 2011 at 11:05am
Monday night saw the Speedway World Cup Event 2 take place at Kings Lynn with Team Great Britain looking to take the overall victory and advance straight to the Final on Saturday. At the end of the night it was the Poles that claimed a commanding victory in Event Two scoring a sensational 62 points.
Team Great Britain were second on 49 and earned a place in the SWC Race-Off at Gorzow on Thursday night, where they will fight for one of two places in Saturday’s SWC Final at the same venue. They will be joined by Russia, who claimed a shock third place at the Norfolk Arena on 21 despite tracking only a four-man team. The Czech Republic lost out on 20 and are eliminated.
Team GB have been drawn into the white helmets for this meeting, while the Russians are in blue. Event One runners-up Sweden wear yellow and Australia complete the line-up in red. The Lions go into the meeting without former Grand Prix star Scott Nicholls, who will remain in the UK to look after his partner Sophie, who recently underwent surgery. His place will be taken by Lewis Bridger and team manager Neil Middleditch hopes he will rise to the biggest test of his career to date.
He said: “Lewis has made it public that he wanted to be involved and should have been involved. So I’ll give him a chance. He has talked the talk. Now he has to walk the walk. He’s a capable rider and we know he has the talent.” “He has been in contact with me to say he has new engines and has been testing things, so he is very keen to do well.”
EVENT TWO SCORES:
Poland 62: 1 Tomasz Gollob 13, 2 Jaroslaw Hampel 10, 3 Janusz Kolodziej 11, 4 Piotr Protasiewicz 13, 5 Krzysztof Kasprzak 15.
Team Great Britain 49: 1 Chris Harris 16, 2 Scott Nicholls 6, 3 Tai Woffinden 10, 4 Edward Kennett 11, 5 Ben Barker 6.
Russia 21: 1 Roman Povazhny 8, 2 Sergey Darkin 4, 3 Ilya Bondarenko 3, 4 Renat Gafurov 6, 5 No Rider.
Czech Republic 20: 1 Ales Dryml 2, 2 Matej Kus 0, 3 Lukas Dryml 9, 4 Tomas Topinka 5, 5 Filip Sitera 4.