Ipswich Eagles are British Club Champions for 2016, retaining the title for the fifth year in a row.
This year’s finals were packed in to one long weekend at the Midlands tracks.
On Saturday 28th May the Under 19s opened our account, retaining the U19 Championship for the 4th year on the trot.
The women then came a close second to Leicester as they took their 11th Womens title; with only four points in it, our girls’ time will come. Spare a thought for the Under 10s families and Vets who stayed in Ipswich to run a Try It session on Whitehouse park, hunting for the our generation of superstars.
On Sunday our Vets team missed out on a personal best better-than-last by one point with only three riders, two of our regulars sidelined by old boy injuries and Chairman Mr Harvey pulling on the race shirt one more time.
Our Under 16s took the title in commanding form, Reece Johnson looking the finished article in his first British Club appearance and Chloe Pearce shrugging off Saturday’s injuries to compete. The riders were amused by the Ipswich crest on the British Under 16 shield, which was donated by the club in 2014.
Our neighbours Kesgrave powered to their seventh Under 10 title, the young Eagles finishing fourth.
The cumulative Championship points after day 2 gave Ipswich a healthy lead, with Poole following closely and the teams sharing a semi final for both of Monday’s events. Ipswich and Kesgrave took the two places in the Under 13s final, knocking out Poole and Sheffield. Poole gave Ipswich a fight for the final spot, eating in to Ipswich’s 4 point lead in their final heats from 2 grids inside Ipswich but were undone by Charlie Johnson’s 4th lap pass and heat win.
Kesgrave went on to retain the Under 13 title, Ipswich finishing a comfortable second overall. Congratulation to Kesgrave’s Jake Vincent and Lewis Brinkhoff who took all the points in their joint 14 heats, but star of the (Suffolk based) Under 13s has to be Kristian Mitchell who rode out of his skin for his 19 points and no last places.
Ipswich and Wednesfield made the Open final by a more comfortable margin, joining Stockport and East Park and making the overall British Club Championship Ipswich’s for the fifth successive year. Ipswich hoped to go one better than their second places in 2014 and 2015. The opening four heats went against them as Wednesfield to 16 points from their grid ones. Ipswich then dropped one point in six heats and closed the gap. Not content with second they crashed twice pressurising Wednesfield and finished second as Wednesfield focused on containing the Ipswich riders in the final four heats.
Many thanks to the riders, managers, coaches, chauffeurs, fans and other volunteers who make this possible, and make our club what it is. Same again in 2017?