Euro Sand Blasters
By Team TMX on 16th Oct 15
Holland retained its Quadcross of European Nations title in the deep sand at Schwedt in Germany on Sunday as an avalanche of bad luck put paid to the British and Irish challenges.
With the track conditions ideal for the sand loving Dutch they were super consistent across the three races, with their riders scoring a win, a second, a third, two sevenths and an eighth.
It was enough to give them a four point winning margin over Latvia, who were led from the front in some style by the recently crowned European Champion, Edgars Mengelis, who won his qualifying heat and both his races with ease.
Host nation Germany secured third after some inspired riding from its young team, which included two second places.
However, going into Sunday's action it was the Irish who were being tipped for their first ever overall victory after Dean Colhoun had won the opening qualifying heat and Justin Reid the third. That, along with Leon Rogers' fifth in heat two, meant they topped qualifying and got first gate pick in Sunday. Britain had qualified ninth of the 15 teams competing.
However, when the first 25-minute plus-two-lap race started it was Mengelis who set the pace while the GB and Irish challenge started to unravel immediately.
First Bevan struggled to get off the line with an engine that had gone sick on the sighting lap and Colhoun got rammed in turn two.
Up front Mengelis was superb, he built up out a 20-second lead over the 14-laps and set a fastest lap that was two-seconds quicker than the field. However, behind him former European Champion, Mike van Grinsven from Holland, Cooper and Italy's Andrea Cesari were involved a titanic battle for the minor placings.
Van Grinsven eventually eased out a ten second gap but the Cooper/ Cesari scrap went down the final corner with Cooper just holding out by less than a second.
Ireland's Leon Rogers had quietly but efficiently worked his way to a fine seventh, while Colhoun could only recover to 13th after an additional pit stop to sort a quick fix for his overheating Can-Am.
In race two Mengelis was even more dominant, winning by an astonishing 39-nine seconds from a fine three-way battle between Germany's Stefan Schreiber, Holland's Joe Maessen and Germany's Manfried Zienecker, which ended in that order.
Estonia's Martin Filatov was fifth and Denmark's Casper Holm was sixth, but until the very last lap they were split by Rogers, who could not help to show his frustration when a loose electrical connection halted his Kawasaki. It dropped him to 24th in the classification.
Reid, his veteran team-mate, had been upside down on lap one but recovered well to eighth spot. Sixteen-year-old Bevan, now riding Cooper's machine instead, rode a sterling race to finish 17th.
Britain's Bailey Edwards was in the wars in his first ride and eventually finished 29th, three laps in arrears, after a heavy crash in the whoops damaged his hand and medical staff would not release him to race until they had checked him over.
Going into the final race the title was looking likely to head to either Latvia or Germany, who had 11 points each, or Holland who had 12.
And with the stakes and tension high, the sharp uphill hairpin first turn, which had caused so many crashes during the day, caused its biggest of all.
With van Grinsven determined to keep Holland in the fray he refused to yield as the pack came across on him causing a chain reaction melee involving around ten riders – including Cooper!
The Welshman got his bike back to the work area and he lost five laps while his team did wonders to replace a broken track rod and straighten the front end. He ended the race 24th, an effort that dragged the team up from 11th to tenth in the final rankings.
Meanwhile van Grinsven was making full use of the chaos behind him, stretching out a 35-second lead on the pack, which was headed by Germany's Julian Hass and Reid, who had started on row two but had got around the carnage and worked his way up the field.
Poland's Wiltold Natkaniec couldn't believe his luck to hang onto the fourth, to the delight of the large Polish contingent that had crossed the nearby border to offer support, with Karlis Bole the first Latvian in fifth. Critically for the overall standings, veteran Dutchman Ingo ten Vregelaar was seventh, to secure the overall win.
Edwards, riding on pain-killers, put in an excellent stint to take 15th place, while Colhoun went out with a broken chain.
