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World Champion taking another painful fall,
reigning champion N icki Pedersen is surely
too far adrift to catch the Aussie duo, wh ile
Ryan Sullivan's second successive early exit
and Jar oslaw Hampel's absence through
injury put paid to their hopes.
O nly American Greg Hancock, the winner of the previous Grand Prix in Cardi ff, is
in a position to issue a worthwhile challenge,
but even he is overshadowed by the duo
from down under.
Six Danes started the meeting, which
began with a spectacular Happy IDOth
Birthday tribute to the FIM (the world governing body of the sport) that included having I 00 youngsters on SOcc and BOcc bikes
on the track at the same time. Come the
start of heat 18, all six Danes were still
involved. 1hough Pedersen went furthest in
reaching the final, young wild cards Bjerre
and Niels-Kristian Iversen deservedly
claimed most of the plaudits for battiing
through to the semifinals, while Hans
Andersen cruelly missed out on joining them
when he threw a primary chain with the
checkered flag beckoning in heat 22.
Crump, who had been decked by
Pedersen in heat 19, twice had to make the
start to take victory in the final.The first run ning had seen Pedersen, at the back , rear
into the safety-fence, and though he made a
magnanimous effort to clear the track,
sprinting to catch his wayward machine and
drag it onto the center green, English referee Tony Steele was forced to stop the race.
In the reru n he again powered to the
fro nt, though Coventry 's Andreas
Jonsson took advantage of a
second chance to gate
ahead of Hancock and finish runner-up fo r
his best-ever plad ng in the Grand Prix.
"I was leading the first time, and it is
always annoying when the red lights come
on and you have to stop:' said Crump. "Fair
play to Nicki, he tried to get his bike off the
track, and luckily I made anoth er good start,
sq ueezed down on Andreas and won. It was
really cooL"
Ped e rse n said that he felt a lot of pressure
to make the Final, and he was relieved that
he did .
"I had the knife at my throat with five
other Danes in the meeting, but I felt I handled it well: ' Pedersen said. "The two wild
cards did a really good job, but it was me
who had all the pressure. I had 400 guests
and sponsors before the meeting, and
everything went really well."
Pedersen also made no bones about the
fact that he felt the referee got it so wrong
with two really, really bad decisions against
him.
"First when he excluded me when I was
leading Jason in heat 19," Pede rse n said, "it
was just radng, and I didn't do anyth ing
wrong at all. The referee needs to stueIy the
monitor more . It seems like that everything
I do is wrong w ith referees, and it can't go
on. In the finalwhen I crashed, I ran after the
bike and pulled it onto the center green.
When I was lying there, the other three riders hadn' t even passed the third comer, and
the referee put the red lig ht on .
"Y don 't see many riders rush ing to get
ou
the bike off the track
like that, but I like
Jason
and
didn't want
the race stopped," Pedersen
added. "I know Jason doesn't have
a problem with me. We both race
as hard as we can and have lots of
confidence, so perhaps that's why
people don't like us: '
moved
above
Hancock
Rickardsson into third place, but
he is 19 points behind Crump, and
unless the Aussie has a really bad
one between now and the final
round in Norway on O ctober 2, it
is difficult to see him being overhauled . Adams, who was passed
byJonsson in heat 10but then won
heats 14 and 20 to reach the last
eight , remains Crump's big threat.
but Hancock isn't quite ready to
throw in the towel.
" It was another good night for
me," said the Californian, wh o was
World Champion in 1997 , "and it
was great to get 18 points.
"Everything worked well, and the
engine I used was perfect for the
track. I need to kee p the pressure
up on Jaso n. He has been very
con sistent, but if we keep pushing
him, he m ight stumble."
Danes dominated from the start of what
proved an incident-laden meeting, with
lversen winning heat two off the outside,
Jespe r B.Jensen winning heat three from the
same starting grid, Andersen taking six and
8jerre winning heat eight with fellow wild
card Iversen second. In between, a battle
between two Danish riders saw Jensen
spend four laps trying to second-guess
where Bjarne Pedersen's attack was coming
from in heat seven, only for the Wroclaw GP
winner to take him up the inside on the back
straight of the final circuit to follow
Rickardsson past the flag.
Nicki Pedersen joined in the fun by landing heat nine on his first appearance of the
night. much to the delight of the partisan
Danish fans, but a troublesome rut on the
fourth tum was to cause problems the
longer the meeting went on .
Scott Nicholls located it first in heat 16,
Rickardsson reared up to crash in heat 20,
while Nicholls d id it again in the semifinal as
he desperately tried to stave off Jo nsson's
outside attack off the last tum.
It was a mixed night for Nicho lls, who
had qualified for th e se mifinals w hen
Andersen lost his chain leading into the final
tum of hea t 22. The British ride r, whose GP
campaign was sabotaged by a serious knee
injury at the start of the season, said: "Iguess
I have to be grateful that I had a spot of luck
when Hans had his engine failure and I made
the semi-finals, but then I didn't have the luck
again once I got into the semis.
"To be fair to Andreas, if I hadn't tried to
get the extra bit of grip and move over a bit
in the semifinal, he was go ing to pass me,"
N icholls said. "I knew he was allover me,
but Greg was just a little slow in the comers,
and I kept meeting him, and didn't know
whether to go on the outside or the inside.
Whichever way Iwent, I knew Iwas going to
leave a ho le and that Andreas would be past
me. When Greg hit the hole earlier in the
race, I could have laid it down and got a
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restart, and Greg would have been out. But
I am a racer, and I try and stay on the bike
and race for my points , and I felt I was there
in the final. But then I caught the hole and
crashed:'
As for heat 19, Nicki Pedersen had gated
ahead of Hancock and Crump, and the latter
had swooped around Hancock on turns
three and four when the Dane switched his
line to midtrack. His dirt-deflector appeared
to make contact with Crump's front wheel,
and the Aussie came to grief. He threw his
anTIS up in dismay, and though Steele's dedsion to exclude Pedersen was never likely to
make him Mr. Popular with the Copenhagen
crowd, he was left with little alternative.
Crump got up to finish second behind
Hancock in the rerun but then won his semifinal off the inside gate and the final off gate
three to leave his challengers with plenty of
food for thought in the next couple of
months.
Crump said afterward that he intended
taking a short break from radng with his family to "fi nd some sun and have a few days'
rest. " He will sit on the beach in the knowledge that his first tide is now there for the taking, and finally he has the chance to rid himself
of that label of being the best rider never to
have been crowned World Champion. 01
PARKEN STADIUM
CoPENHAG EN, DENMARK
REsullS: JU NE 26, 2004 (ROUND
5)
SEMI I: I. G.eg Hancock; 2. Andrea