By Avenash Ramzan
History will be created on Saturday (July 22) when the first-ever day/night grasstrack meet is held at the Anna Regina Community Centre ground.
The activity represents Round Three of the Stag Beer Grasstrack Championship Series 2017. It will speed off at 16:00h and conclude under floodlights, and according to Chief Organiser, Sheik Yassin, all systems are in place for an exciting round of racing on the Essequibo Coast.
“Fans are in for a treat basically because we have after a pretty long time in excess of 20 riders coming to (the starting) line, and because of that we’re having three categories. We’ll be having the professional category, the novice category and the newcomers category because we have five or six newcomers who never ride before and we don’t want to put them to ride with the novice,” Yassin indicated. “We’ve broken the 10 races to five professional (12 laps each), three novice (10 laps each) and two newcomers (10 laps each).”
Following a visit to the county last weekend, Yassin indicated that the ground is in pristine condition and Essequibians are hyped about event, which will comprise a total of 10 races.
Meanwhile, Yassin is enthused by the influx of new riders to the sport and the fact that many persons have been upgrading their bikes since the Championship Series commenced this year.
“What I’m so happy about is that from February to now we have seven new bikes; people are just investing in bikes and the bike is almost one million dollars. We’ve put a lot into it to bring it to where it is today so I’m quite satisfied with the turnout of riders and the enthusiasm of the riders…some men already have a bike and spending a further million dollars to upgrade it, so we’re in for a good meeting,” Yassin explained.
At the last race meet in Essequibo, Steven Nobrega was in excellent form, winning all the professional races, but had mixed returns in the following leg in Berbice. Yassin pointed to some of the riders who could give Nobrega a strong challenge come race day.
“I got a hint that Andrew Wong would be riding this race meeting so that’s a big plus if he comes out and a big challenge for him (Nobrega). But apart from him there’s the Spellen brothers from Essequibo; they’ve just got new and upgraded bikes and one of the Spellen brothers won the champion rider in Berbice and here it is now they’re going on their home ground,” Yassin indicated.
He continued, “We also have Raj Rajkarran, who is third in the overall points standing; we have Ravi Ramkumar, who is on 55 points in second and Steven is on 125, but that gap could close quite easily depending on what happens in Essequibo.”
Admission to the venue is $1,000 for adults and $500 for children and the event is sponsored by Stag Beer in partnership with a number of other sponsors. Following this weekend’s event, three more rounds will be held before the end of the year when an overall champion will be crowned in the various categories.
