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WOr"'ld Super"'bike Championship Round 12, Assen, Holland The improbable happens In Holland By GORDON RITCHIE PHOTOS BY GOLD & GOOSE ASSEN,HO~D,SEPT.8 ~ fter so many dull and featureless Superbike races this season (with a couple notable exceptions), the championship, the race action, and the whole contest went into overdrive. The impossible - the dream for everyone not directly involved with the Ducati team - came true, and now the championship will be decided in a man-against-man last-day showdown. It's gonna be huge at Imola on September 29, and all because of this weekend's action at Assen. Some decry the two-race-per-day format of World Superbike, but one thing is certain - it gives the top riders a real chance to score either a skip load of points, or salvage a day that was going off the rails in disas- :&i:, World 16 SEPTEMBER 18, 2002' cue I trous style. For Troy Bayliss, it was all going the positive way to start, with a close second - but then it turned into a nightmare, with a crash in race two. "I had the crash in exactly the same place and exactly the same circumstances as I had in practice," stated a surprisingly even-keeled Bayliss after the second race. "Just as I got off the brakes and just, just touched the gas, I highsided. I'm not so unhappy about going to Imola one point behind in the championship. I am more unhappy about not being able to get my bike set up properly this weekend. We just never got it quite right. Today was the result that most people wanted, so it's good for them, I suppose." Assen is a momentous place for Edwards and Bayliss, the backdrop where Honda and Edwards lost the title one weekend early last season, • n e _ s and Bayliss took his first-ever global crown, saving Ducati Corse from terminal embarrassment, some would argue. True to that form, the lightly remodeled, yet still classically sculpted, circuit once more hosted a World Superbike meeting full of incident. The double winner (it not being 14-timer Bayliss' turn this time) was obviously Colin Edwards (the other World Superbike-winning machine, now with nine), once more untouchable on his big V-twin, even by the best riders in the Superbike world. His virtual start-to-finish wins, in glorious race conditions, were contrasted sharply against the black cloud that dogged season-long championship leader Bayliss. They never got his 998F02 going like it normally does, and he paid the price. Whether or not the psychological pressure exerted by Edwards' neversay-die attitude had an effect on the state of mind of Bayliss will never be known, but for some reason Bayliss was once more unable to get into Edwards' plane of existence. After race one, Bayliss stated as much. "The first few laps, I was a bit unsettled, my knee is a bit sore from my crash yesterday and I think all of us were making mistakes in the opening part of the race," the Australian said. "It took a while, but I started to feel like myoid self. It's not the easiest track to pass on, and it took a while for to get past Noriyuki [Haga] - you have to wait for some sort of mistake. I think I had six wins Nell Hodgson (100) rocketed off the line In the first of two World Superbike races at the Circuit van Drenthe in Assen. Holland. He leads Troy Bayliss (1). Colin Edwards (hIdden) and the rest of the World Superblke pack.