ROWE RULES RIBAND

Anders Rowe was crowned the 32nd Blue Riband winner as he won the THERMOHOME sponsored individual meeting at Wimborne Road on Wednesday and revealed that he almost withdrew ahead of the meeting through ill health.

Having scored 14 points, beaten only by his club captain Zach Cook who himself missed out on a rostrum finish, Rowe confessed "About 2am this morning on the way back from Glasgow I was ready to pull out as I was feeling pretty lousy. I've not felt too good all day so maybe I should be like that all the time and get the results. Winning here tonight feels good and the cash prize will be very useful. It's a long winter for sure and with what I want to be doing next year with my racing it means I have got more money to spend on my equipment."

Whilst Rowe's victory over Cook was without real incident, runner-up Richard Lawson had to be far more ruthless to get the better of the club skipper when they met in heat nineteen. For once, Lawson wasn't ready to finish behind a team-mate, explaining "I had to be a bit hard on Zach in our last race as I could see it going to a run-off if I stayed behind him, so I was trying to 'politely' pass him for three laps and then I had to send him away, so hopefully he is still talking to me."

Pre-meeting favourite Lawson suffered a huge blow when his throttle came loose ahead of heat five and he admitted that he deliberately ran the tapes hoping to be able to make a bike switch and set off from 15 metres, but he was simply disqualified without a handicap option. "That was a blow and I saw that other first ride winners were dropping points which was helpful and I was keeping a watch on Anders but he hardly put a foot wrong so well played to him for winning tonight."

Adam Ellis completed the rostrum trio and confessed that he had "forgotten how fast it canbe around Poole especially when out by the fence"  but admitted that it was good to be back at Poole.

Final Positions
14:Anders Rowe; 12:Richard Lawson; 11:Adam Ellis; 10:Zach Cook,Drew Kemp;  9:Tobias Thomsen,Kevin Juhl Pedersen,Scott Nicholls; 8:William Cairns,Paul Starke;  4:Vinnie Foord,Luke Killeen; 3:Jonas Jeppesen,Edward Kennett,Darryl Ritchings,Ben Morley
 

Full Heat Details and meeting report 

Photo credit Liam Cockwell