It was a glorious day at Upper Lansdowne road for the first major handicap event of the Winter road Season. Despite the weather a sombre mood prevailed with the sad news relatiing to Lloyd & Kirsty's loss. The Club is deeply saddened & our prayers go out for Lloyd & Kirsty. Greg Walmsley took over the handicapping duties & did a great job in a closely contested event. Held over two laps of the course, the limit riders of Paula Callaghan & Toni McInerney had a forty minute advantage over the next group of Brian Louden, Stephen Nicholson & Graeme Budden at thirty five minutes. The danger bunch at 19 3/4 minutes consisted of Phil Mitchell, Brian Lewis, Don Worger, Ben Haywood, Clint Squires & Vanessa Croker & would be hard to catch with the second C Grade bunch of Tyler Nicholson, Bill Harris, Russell Davis, Stephen McInerney, Stephen Richardson & Ian Budden a further five minutes back.  At another 4 minutes back was the first of the B Graders with Kellie Yeark, Greg Walmsley, Tanya Cross, Mick Cross & Michael Gilbert. there was two other bunches befor e the scratch pairing of Stephen Lewis & Josh Blick.

                   Chopping block hich had 1 3/4 minutes advantage over scratch were riding well with Graham Norris riding hard with Sam Alley, Daniel Crossingham & Gavin Jackson giving good support. The scratchies needed to catch block before scratch caught the bunch with the hard riding Wayne Callaghan in its ranks or it would be all over for the lads in scratch. Meanwhile the trio of Louden, Nicholson & Budden were making good pace & held what looked like an unassailable lead with only the Mitchell, Lewis, Worger, Squires & the picked up Robert Alley who was the only survivor from his bunch. Unfortunately the scratchies did not pick up chopping block & they had combined with the Callaghan group to really start moving & picked up the B Grade bunch on the second lap. The sole survivors of the second C Grade bunch, Tyler Nicholson, Ian Budden & Stephen McInerney were still riding hard & had the leaders in site along the long straights but were picked up by the fast finishing combined bunches. With a slight chance of still being able to catch the leaders, the bunch pushed on but failed to catch the leaders by a mere 57 seconds. In a three way sprint, Brian Louden won from Stephen Nicholson with Graeme Budden home in third after pushing himself to the limit to help keep a winning lead. Fourth place went to Don Worger, fifth Phil Mitchell, sixth Brian Lewis, seventh Clint Squires, eighth Glen Handford, ninth, Graham Norris & tenth Wayne Callaghan. In the tussle for fastest time, Stephen Lewis outsprinted Josh Blick to take the honors.

                  Thanks to Amber Piper & Harold Geenhalgh for Traffic Control & Garry Piper & Sue Hart for sign ons & race control.