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| Added: 17 Aug 2013 |
Category: 2013 Oval Racing |
| 2013 - #36 – Ballymena Raceway – 16/8/13 |
Admittedly it’s not often I’m stuck for something to say about a meeting, I’m normally full of praise, full of criticism or some would say full of sh…. but you get the idea, on this occasion I’m somewhat stumped.
As ever a meeting including Nationals and F2’s is one of my “must see” meetings, but throughout the week I’d been in two minds as to whether to go or not, I’ve reached that point in the season that my motivation is dwindling and I’m starting to feel a little burnt out, it’s normally a rush for me to do Ballymena on a Friday night after football, I’m a camera down which is still drying out from Bristol and I can’t afford to scrap another one in the wet. Football was cancelled, the weather looked good and it was only at around 5.30 I decided I was going. Had any number of factors there been slightly different and I wouldn’t have gone, or I would have arrived too late to be caught up in the whole bomb scare thing.
There looked to be a good field of cars in the pits with the addition of the Aghadowey classes, which I’m told has now been closed, and despite some variety in the weather it looked like a good night could be ahead and we’d see some good racing. Sadly, due to idiots, as can be the case in this country, the meeting ended up abandoned and everyone ended up evacuated onto the pitches down the back of the showgrounds.
It appears a pipebomb was left/ found in the car park at Ballymena, who knows what was being targeted, or why they were being targeted, or was it just to pull police from somewhere else. We’ll probably never know what the motives were for the attack, and hopefully it will be an isolated incident. As the evening progressed the police arrived, bomb disposal arrived, everything was diffused and we all got to go home.
Looking at the positives of the evening, while I doubt it was an attack on the sport, it’ll still unite people and make the sport stronger, it has provided media coverage and I don’t believe in bad publicity, it’s certainly better that people are talking about you than that no one is talking about you. Everyone has probably come away with a different story than they normally have from the racing. For people like me who had no idea what these Aghadowey classes coming to race are like, there was a good pit full of cars and my generally impression is that I was robbed of a good nights racing, which possibly isn’t even the case, but it’ll still see me have greater enthusiasm next week to go to the racing, than I had this week when those classes were unknown.
Maybe most importantly, it demonstrated that in the case of an emergency the staff at the track had everyone well out of harms way, so people shouldn’t be fearful of “what if” scenarios.
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