Joe Haines the British Under-21 Champion who rides for the Sheffield Tigers and Mason Campton the high flying teenage Australian who amassed seventeen points on his first visit to Beaumont Park complete the line-up for Leicester’s flagship individual event of the season, the Pride of the Midlands which takes place on Sunday 26th August at 2.30pm.
Leicester’s Co-promoter Alan Jones says: “There is a real mixture of talent on show ranging from those who are on an upward curve in their career to those at the top so the chemistry should make for an absorbing twenty heats of speedway. We are pleased that Patrick Hougaard accepted an invitation to return to defend the title he won last year and there should be plenty of competition to keep him on his toes.”
The line-up includes a number of top performers in Sam Masters, the reigning Premier League Riders Champion, the Plymouth rider Ryan Fisher who represented the USA in the World Cup earlier this season and Leigh Lanham from the Ipswich Witches. Two of Lanham’s teammates are also in the meeting, Rohan Tungate, who won four races at Beaumont Park earlier this month and Taylor Poole who collected a gold medal in the Premier League Fours’ Final at Leicester last season. Kasper Lykke, who made his British Speedway debut for Rye House at Leicester earlier this month and scored seven points’ is also included along with Henning Bager who rode for the Lions last season. There should be a large following from Wolverhampton to watch Adam Skornicki who spent eight seasons at Monmore Green. The former National Champion of Poland now rides for Start Gniezno in the Polish Division One League and Vargarna in Sweden.
Leicester will be represented by five of the current team, Kauko Nieminen, Lasse Bjerre, Linus EklÓ§f, Jan Graversen and Magnus Karlsson who will be hoping to improve on his second place in the event last season.
“The event was launched last year and we hope to make the Pride of the Midlands competition a regular attraction in our fixture calendar. To do this requires additional investment to assemble a quality field that would do justice to the event and therefore we are grateful to AFS (1993) Limited who have come forward to underpin what we hope will be a great afternoon’s racing at Beaumont Park” added Jones.
During the interval the riders will be walking around the terraces collecting donations from fans for the Speedway Riders Benevolent Fund which is a worthwhile organisation that does so much good work in aid of injured riders.
At the end of the meeting there will be an auction of the special one-off AFS (1993) Limited Pride of the Midlands race-bibs and all proceeds raised will be donated by the company to their chosen charity, the Air Ambulance. So if you want to help a good cause and are interested in making a bid for a piece of history then listen out for the details of the auction on Sunday.
Draw
1. Kasper Lykke
2. Jan Graversen
3. Joe Haines
4. Leigh Lanham
5. Henning Bager
6. Ryan Fisher
7. Sam Masters
8. Taylor Poole
9. Lasse Bjerre
10. Patrick Hougaard
11. Rohan Tungate
12. Magnus Karlsson
13 Mason Campton
14. Adam Skornicki
15. Linus Eklöf
16. Kauko Nieminen
1st Reserve: Jari Mäkinen
2nd Reserve: Chris Widman
Alan Jones
Co-Promoter & Press Officer
T: 01509 561521
M: 07817 857024
E: alan.jones@leicester-speedway.com
