ONLY illness or a serious stumble in the remaining two stages can stop Steve Dawes landing his second All-Terrain Challenge title in four years. The 2004 champion showed a fine turn of speed to win in last evening’s 800m ‘devil-take-the-hindmost’ race at Foote’s Lane, and with Mike Doyle, Steve Bienvenu and Sam Dowding all coming in between the Division One leader and his main rival, Dave Holmes, it was a good evening for the favourite.

With a runner forced out at the completion of each 400m lap, there were some exciting sprint finishes over the dozen laps of the race.

But on the final lap and with Doyle a spent force, Dawes powered down the last 120m for a convincing win in front of the Garenne Stand.

There were more thrilling finishes elsewhere.

Richard Stapley made up more than 100m on Gail Merrien to win the Division Two B final, while island hockey star Damien Wallen gave a similar start to the seven women in the Division Four A final and ran 2min. 28sec. to beat them all, including runner-up Jo Bell, who pushed him hard over the final 200m.

But the best two-lap races came in the accompanying GIAAC races.

Both the junior mixed race and senior men’s club championship produced photo-finishes.

Guy Craze pipped Tom Paul by a nose to win the junior event in 2-17.1, the runner-up being given the same time.

Then, in the senior men’s event, Matt Loveridge, still just 17, held off Lee Garland to win his first club title in 2-00.1 to the runner-up’s 2-00.2.

Just behind them Matt Bailey ran a hugely encouraging debut 800 race and clocked 2-02, this after a lengthy period of inaction through injury, and Ronan Shally ran his own PB of 2-05.1.

The two GIAAC 100m sprint titles went to Island Games sprint relay members.

Laura Arblaster powered clear to win the women’s title in 13.0 to Helen Watts’ 13.4 with three talented under-15s – Caroline Kyle, Chloe Huxster and Ciara Fossey – covered by very little in third to fifth.

The men’s title went to Robin Cowling in 11.4 with Michael Batiste second in 12.0 and Hwyel Robinson pipping Sam Stonebridge for third.

The All-Terrain series returns to Icart this evening for the five-mile cliff-path time-trials.