On Sunday, the Wessex League saw round six at Popham Airfield for the final time, hosted by Pedalon and NHRC. The weather was intense with torrential rain and the wind picking up throughout the day.
The course got slippier and muddier as the races continued. It was an uphill start, straight into a series of corners. When going into the woods, the riders were met with many banks and even more mud. They came in and out at the back, before re-entering the woods, down a bank and through a long slog of mud back to the main arena.
Sotonia had a positive start in our youth section. First up were the U8s, where Leighton Riley received second place, alongside Florence Boustred in third, Sunny Muriithi in tenth and Jordan Riley in eleventh, For u10s, Theo Plumb worked hard for third place with young Joseph Lovegrove in tenth. Our u12s had an excellent start with Freddie Trosh making his way up the pack to finish in fifth and Reuben Lewis hunting everyone down to reach sixth place. James Sutton came in eighth with Billy Dyer in fifteenth and Leeyo Muriithi in nineteenth, an excellent race from all.
Our female u14s did brilliantly with Eve Carline achieving her second win of the season (ninth overall in the mixed event), and Matilda Wilks finishing fourth.
The u16 males were again the ones to watch with Tom Allen going straight from the start and developing a large gap pretty quickly. Tom Wilks chased after, separating himself from the fight for third. He worked hard to close the gap but Tom Allen took the win by 10 seconds. Reuben Harrington also fought hard with his first front row start, finishing seventh. Our only female u16 racing, Marit Davidse, finished in fifth, her second top five of the season.
Moving on from our younger riders, the Junior men did well with Niclas Olley finishing in third, George Connell in fifth and Monty Flavell in eighth.
Andrew Gardiner was third in the v40 Open category, followed closely by Pete Boustred in fourth and Phil Banks in eighth. Emma Harrison came third in the junior women’s race and Gemma Wilks second in the women’s v40s.
Overall, our riders did really well, hopefully with more good things to come this weekend. Really proud and well done to them all. See you Sunday 27th October for round seven at Kingsclere in Newbury.
