ACE Races - £7000 in Series Prizes

Rob Howard / 20.09.2005

The 3rd and final two day ACE Race of the year on Exmoor was also the conclusion of the 2005 series, and the winners received a total of over £7000 worth of prizes.

On a fine weekend all the contenders were in competition and knew what they had to do to win the series. As it turned out all the leaders going into the race held onto the top positions to claim their titles.

Tom Gibbs in the male solos (the highest ACE Race points scorer ever), had a strong lead, and his task was made easier then nearest challenger Andy Simpson was ill and struggled to finish. He finished with 7112 points from 3 races.

Jonathan Emberton & Phil Scarfe in the male pairs also had a strong lead from their wins in the first two races in Wales and The Lake District and once again stayed ahead of challengers Russ Ladkin and Jeff Powell-Davies.

Team SleepMonsters also had a comfortable lead over Lewiskit.com/Phfs-Ifa.co.uk, and despite Marco Ponteri’s illness and Jen Brown limping to the finish, they held on for 3rd place in the race and won the series by over 500 points. Over the 3 races they’d finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd and only Tom Gibbs beat their points total of 6479.

In the female solos Gill Watson was chasing a 91 point deficit, but Karen MacDonald increased her lead to take the series with 4451 points. The mixed pairs was also close, with Clive and Judith Hughes trying to make up a deficit of 123 points. They won the race, but not by enough to stop James and Lisa Thurlow taking the series title.

The winners in each class received a £250 Snow & Rock voucher each, the runners up will get the new Exposure Light Joystick, which can be handlebar/helmet mounted, or used as a headtorch, and 3rd place all received Anquet Mapping software at 1:50,000 covering half of the UK.

Full results for the race and the series are on www.aceraces.com.