This Is Guernsey

By Rob Batiste

Action from the 1969 sand racing season. Maurice Ogier won both the Guernsey and Jersey car championships that summer. (0601436)

THE summer of 69. Good title for a song, I reckon, and a cracking year for Guernsey sand racing.

In fact, it just might be the best there ever was. The sport was still in rude health, with big Thursday afternoon crowds lining the Vazon sea wall to follow their bike heroes throughout a busy summer’s racing and the annual ‘Muratti’ was still in existence.

The trouble was, Jersey’s bikers were pretty handy on the sand and when Guernsey’s bike team travelled to the sister isle for the inter-insular in late August that year, they did so more in hope than expectation.

‘It was a bit like the rugby [the Siam],’ said Guernsey stalwart Bill Cohu this week, meaning we didn’t often win. ‘On bikes, we hadn’t won it for years.’

But the Guerns did that memorable afternoon.

Over to the paper of Saturday 30 August and this intro: ‘Guernsey motorsport enthuasiasts are cock-a-hoop after crowning the most successful season in the history of sand racing by rubbing Jersey’s noses into the beach at St Ouen.’

Words which make any proud Guernseyman weep with joy.

The full story was that it was Guernsey’s first bike win on Jersey sand and the star of the show was Hughie Saunders, who was already making a name for himself on the UK speedway circuit.

He was also hurting himself.

He arrived at St Ouen still recovering from a broken arm, but stepped in to ride Rodney ‘Doughnut’ Leivars’ machine when the latter had broken his collar bone.

King of the Sands on the same machine in 1968, Saunders rode superbly to dominate the 350s and over.

Guernsey’s small bike team of Terry Batiste, Rod Yeates and Hedley Guillou had won their match 13-8, so it was up to the big boys to hold on to the visitors’ advantage and they did more than that.

With Saunders out front from Caesarean star Jack Hubbard, Robbie Froome filled third and and Roy Damarell fifth to score a 12-9 category win. Guernsey were home.

They were great days for the sport.

Cohu, who had not long started out in sand racing, following on from his father, Frank, and elder brother, Tony, loved them.

‘The inter-island was the one event you’d look forward to,’ he said this week.

The start lists of the period put today’s to shame.

It was not untypical for an inter-island race to feature 19 bikes in the 350cc class and 11 in the up-to-500s.

‘It was terrific, but because they were 10-lap races you became well spread out. Today’s five-lap races keep the bikes more bunched.’

Earlier in the summer at Vazon, Maurice Ogier had led a Guernsey 1-2-3-4 in the inter-island car race.

The Jerseymen brought over five cars, but their best performer was Harry Allen in fifth.

Filling positions two to four were Colin Horey, M. de Carteret and J. Robinson.

Article posted on 5th July, 2008 - 9.29am