Its Sunday evening here and the sun hasn’t stopped shining all week! The same cant be said unfortunately for Baltic who is feeling a bit deflated this evening after getting his only puncture of the week only 60 seconds into his race run.

Here’s how the week went down…..

We left Fortwilliam and drove non stop for 1500 miles with fellow Ironhorse pilot Nathan Rankin on board. We arrived late on Tuesday night in the little village and didn’t take long to get straight to bed to catch up on some long awaited sleep. Wednesday arrived in no time and we met the rest of the Irish Team as they arrived in the evening, bringing with them a little care package of Tetley Tea bags to replenish the thunder truck stock levels which had dwindled to a scary level.

We were then able to carry out some testing on our new prototype scruff gang ‘initiator gun’. The old faithful ‘initiator block’ had been left at home so the latest weapon was picked up just before we left Scotland. A full test run write up will follow soon, but for now, we are pleased to report that the prototype seems to be working a treat and should be ready for action at the next possible initiation opportunity.

Baltic and Nathan headed up for practise on Thursday and began to get used to the track. They were finding some fast lines in no time which allowed them to spend a lot of time just getting run after run in, ready for seeding on Saturday.

After seeding in 12^th place, Baltic knew he had a good few seconds left to unleash on race day, so it was back to the hotel room to get some washing on in the shower before getting that Chinese laundry look going on in the bedrooms. It turns out there just aren’t enough door handles and light fittings to hang 5 sets of race kit and some socks on!

Race day came and after a rather hasty start, most riders only managed 2 practise runs if even that before the track was closed for racing. Rankin being a non European, got to race first and after a “big old downsky”, he cart wheeled across with a time of 4:08. Baltic set off out of the start gate with plenty of confidence, but was soon to feel the back end getting a bit soft. He ragged on for a bit longer, but by the time he hit the steep rooty section, there was no air left in the rear tube.

He rolled down sideways and came across the line in what was pretty much, dead last place.

Gutted…..!

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