Express & Star

Wolves meet called off over track danger

Wolverhampton’s home fixture with Peterborough was abandoned after one race last night due to unfit track conditions.

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The heavy downpours that hit the West Midlands late on Saturday night, and continued through until Monday morning, had a devastating impact on the Parrys International Wolves’ clash against the reigning Champions.

Discussions between the two sets of riders took place in the build-up to the meeting and with track work carried out right up until start time, both teams were prepared to give it a go.

But when home reserve Leon Flint came down on bends one and two with experienced former Grand Prix rider Scott Nicholls also struggling to turn the bike for the visitors, the decision was made to call off the meeting there and then.

Team manager Peter Adams said: “We’d had a lot of rain here in the last 24-hours and the track hadn’t really dried out because there’s been no wind, no sun.

“We walked the track before the meeting and it looked a little bit difficult in one or two places and the track guys did what they could with it.

“But as we saw in heat one it wasn’t enough unfortunately.

“All four of the riders I think were in difficulties and it was disappointing, but I also think it was the right decision.”

Meanwhile, club captain Sam Masters, who was also out in the only attempted race, said: “It was unsafe to be honest.

“Scotty and myself went and had a look at the track before the meeting and I thought it looked raceable, or at least rideable, but obviously not.

“We gave it a go and we did our best; the fans were in and we had to try and race for them.

“It was just too dangerous though so it was safer to call it off before anyone got hurt.”

It was a decision supported by SCB referee Chris Durno who had also been keen for the meeting to go ahead.

Said Durno: “There’s been a lot of rain in the Midlands and it had sat on the track around the bends and caused the inside of the track to be very soft.

“We looked at it in the track walk and we thought we’d done enough track work to recover it.

“We were a bit worried about the third bend but as we saw, even the first bend was just as bad. We had experienced riders just not able to turn so we looked at all the options of what we could do in the time space – but unfortunately we had to take the decision to call it off for rider safety because the track was just too grippy.”

Wolverhampton now aim to make it back-to-back successes on the road when they travel to Sheffield on Thursday (7.30pm).