Hot Competition at Exmoor ACE

Rob / 29.07.2002

The weather was scorching hot, and so was the competition at last weekend’s ACE Race. The 3rd event in the series, based at Wimbleball Lake in Somerset, was also the 4th qualifying event for the British Championships, which helped make it the biggest ever ACE Race, with over 300 competitors.

These included 22 teams and it was The North Face (Ju Panter, Pete James, Norman Dunroy and Keith Byrne) who came out on top and won the free place in the British Championships finals. However, they were pushed all they way by ‘The Light Blue Machine’, the team from Cambridge University, who finished despite one of the team spending most of the night in casualty with a suspected broken wrist.

The Male Solo class had its 3rd winner in 3 races so far this year, with Chris McSweeny getting the better of previous winners Tom Gibbs (2nd) and Marc Laithwaite (3rd). Only 30 points separated them, and as so often happens it was the night navigation stage which was decisive. In the ladies solo Liz Cowell was a clear winner again to keep her 100% record this year.

With Team Wales unable to enter the team category due to an injury to Angela Brand-Barker, Aled Rees and Adam Haynes entered the male pairs and won in impressive style by 94 points from Aiden Craig and Ian Edmund. The highly competitive mixed pairs was closer but Nicky and Simon Thomas came out just ahead, while in the ladies pairs Linda Collison and Cherry Fryer were a massive 691 points clear of the second placed pair.

We’ll have a full report and lots of pictures later in the week.