Report: Sudbury MCC
By Dick Law on 8th Mar 17
Ben Clarke with his racing partner Jason Morland, tamed the testing muddy conditions at the Sudbury clubs annual Foxborough Five-hour Endurothon.
The duo won the Two-man Team Championship class by completing 30-laps of a three-mile course, beating Jack Berry and Craig Roper into second place by two laps.
But the event, like lots of others countrywide, was almost cancelled on Saturday morning when the club's workers turned up at the venue to complete their work on the track.
"I drove my 4x4 up to the track from the road and it got stuck,” admitted the club's clerk of the course, Graham Mays.
A phone call was made to club member and enduro rider Steve Finch of G&B Aggregates and over the next three-hours three trucks and a road roller turned up and a road was laid for everyone concerned to get in and parked.
The event is simple, three classes of Two-man teams take turns one at a time round the course with an Ironman class for those that want to suffer more – and the rider/ riders with most laps wins.
However, the weather conditions took a toll on both riders and machines as out of the 160-starters just under half made it to the end of the event, even though the five-hour race was shortened by an hour.
Only 21 of the 36 teams that started reached the finish and only eight of the 34 Ironman riders saw the chequered flag.
Dead on 9am and with rain falling, the riders sprinted down the hill to their machines for the start of the long event, but as battle started to heat up between the leading two teams – Clark/ Morland and Berry/ Roper – the rain started to ease.
The lead swapped countless times as they came into the pits to, until, with under an hour of the shortened race to go, Clark/ Morland established an advantage which saw them eventually finish two laps clear of Berry/ Roper.
Richard Penfold and partner James Yearley were a comfortable third, eight laps down on the leaders but three clear of fourth-placed Craig Page Baker and Sam Mitchell.
The winning Expert team of Ryan McDonnell and Jack Nicolau completed 26 laps, which would have placed them third in the Championship class.
The same could have been said of the second and third placed teams of George Eustace/ Chis Hart, and Joe Marsh/ Mark Mitchell as they finished with 24 and 21 laps respectively, which would have put them up the sharp end of the Championship class.
In the Clubman class Tommy Clarke/ Myles Saunders won on 25 laps with the second and third teams of Michael Wyatt/ Tom Morris and Liam Philips/ Adam Jordon both notching up 22 circuits in the mud.
The Ironman class was all about Maciej Berdysz as after four hours of racing on his own he completed 31 laps to beat Harry Clark by a lap.
Those top two riders were in a class of their own, with third placed Ironman competitor Darren Nicolaou six laps off the pace.
