A Sunny day for Thompson
By TMX Archives on 26th Mar 09
LAST weekend saw the second round of the Dutch ONK Championship at the absolutely beautifully prepared track of Halle, in eastern Holland, writes ANGELA HOUGHTON.
As many MX GP teams and riders are based in and around the Dutch/ Belgium border, many MC GP stars take part in this series and this week was no exception with 10 GP riders in MX2 and five in MX1. This naturally draws in the crowds and over 6,000 fans turned up to watch the Action.
The Dutch federation instead of running an MXY2 for 250's, run an 85cc Big-wheel class alongside the seven championship rounds for the Youth riders. These riders are selected from the Top 20 Dutch Youth Nationals, 15 invited foreign riders and five wild card riders. This week 90 riders turned up! Qualification was in two Groups of 45 and the top 20 from each group go through to the main races.
Flying the flag for Britain were Ryan Houghton, Sunny Thompson, Daniel Hutchinson, Jack Kelly and Michael Eccles, and they all got through Qualification.
Race one saw a very closed fought battle with only two seconds separating the top four going over the finish line!
Ryan Houghton and Sunny Thompson claimed third and fourth with Jack Kelly in ninth, Daniel Hutchinson in 14th and Michael Eccles in 29th.
Race two saw Ryan Houghton in another nail bitingly close battle with Lars Van Berkel who crossed the finishing line just 0.4 seconds ahead of Houghton. Meanwhile Sunny Thompson fought a tremendous battle through from 10th after being knocked off on the start to finish in third place.
At the end of the day two British boys made the top three for a podium place with Lars Van Berkel first, Ryan Houghton second overall, Sunny Thompson third overall.