**Dimitri update: We can confirm that he was admitted to hospital last night for observation and further assessment. Please be assured that he has been made as comfortable as possible, and his family are with him. We await further news this morning and will release a further update as soon as we are able to.**
Meeting report V’s Peterborough
“A week is a long time in politics“… the well-known quote has been attributed to former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, speaking in 1964 about the Sterling crisis. Well, a week is also a long time in speedway and didn’t the meeting with the Panthers prove that?
After an encouraging, if fruitless, trip to Redcar in midweek, the Tigers showed they were in the mood from the off, with 5-1s in the opening two heats. Kevin won heat one with a super start and Dimitri stalked Lewis Blackbird for three laps before breezing past on the inside line off the second bend to take second with Panthers guest Richard Lawson left trailing in fourth. Anders and Kasper also jetted away from the tapes and were never challenged by their Peterborough counterparts.
Ales Dryml stopped the rot in heat three with a tapes to flag win over Theo, while Mark got the better of Ulrich Ostergaard going into the second lap after a good battle on the first circuit. Lasse Bjerre won the next from Rusty but Anders went too wide on the final turns and came down heavily. He took a ride back to the pits in the ambulance but was able to continue after treatment.
Theo and Mark took a second 5-1 of the day over Lawson and Blackbird to move the Tigers ten points up and Panthers team boss Blayne Scroggins quickly put Lasse Bjerre in the black and white hat for heat six. He made another good start and was joined by former Tiger Joe Jacobs, who craftily used the inside line to slot into second spot. Dimitri took up the chase but wee Joe made no mistakes and the Panthers had an 8-1 to reduce the gap to just three.
Ostergaard passed Rusty down the back straight in the next but Mr. Harrison kept the throttle wide open and blasted round the Peterborough captain to retake the lead exiting the fourth turn. With Dryml third ahead of Kasper the heat was shared. Glasgow extended the lead once more in heat eight with a simple 5-1 from Dimitri and Anders, seemingly none the worse for his fall in heat four.
Bjerre continued his excellent run of form with another win in the next from Theo but Jacobs was proving to be troublesome on his return, twice getting past Mark on the inside of turn two, making it stick at the second attempt after Mark had reclaimed third spot on the fourth bend. Dimitri won heat ten but Kevin’s outside run was blocked by Ostergaard, which killed Kevin’s momentum and allowed Dryml into third for another shared heat.
Lawson made the start in heat eleven, but Rusty had obviously been paying attention as he cruised into the lead with a classic cutback to the inside line on the opening bends. Not to be outdone, Kasper repeated the move a lap later and passed both Panthers in one fell swoop for a Glasgow 5-1 but Jacobs and Dryml hit back in heat twelve with a 5-1 for the visitors, Jacobs again using the inside line to great effect and Dryml providing good team-riding support to his young partner.
Lawson made another good gate in heat thirteen but Kevin powered past going into the third turn to lead. Unfortunately, this left Rusty rather too close to the air fence for comfort and he took a spectacular tumble, somersaulting over the handlebars as his bike was caught by the barrier. In the restart, Lawson led again but Kevin was right on his back wheel and when the Panthers guest made a slight error on the last lap, Kevin was through for the win.
Ostergaard was leading the penultimate heat when Theo, secure in second, came down with a thump on the second bend of lap two when his bike abruptly stopped. Jacobs, in for fellow reserve Oliver Greenwood, had already ground to a halt on lap one, so both he and Theo were excluded from the rerun. Kasper chased Ostergaard all the way but to no avail and so it came down to heat fifteen to determine the destination of the league points.
With the scores at 45-41, Kevin and Dimitri lined up against Bjerre and Ostergaard. Kevin led but Ostergaard was right with him and the Panthers captain managed to get past on lap three and took the win, but there was a ding-dong battle for third going on between Dimitri and Bjerre which ended, unfortunately, in a dreadful crash on the back straight. Dimitri picked up too much drive coming out of the second turn and headed for the safety fence but clattered into Bjerre as they both sped past the pits entrance. Both were thrown from their machines but while Bjerre eventually managed to walk back to the pits, Dimitri went off to hospital – a sad way to end what had been an otherwise superb meeting and saw Glasgow get their first points of the 2014 season.
Scorers: Dimitri Berge 9, Rusty Harrison 8, Kevin Wolbert 8, Kasper Lykke 7, Theo Pijper 7, Anders Thomsen 5, Mark Lemon 3.
