TOP rider Anthony Bougourd stormed off the beach at the latest GMC&CC sandracing meeting at Vazon. The unseasonable August weather with westerly winds driving in horizontal rain affected both competitors and officials.

With everyone soaked through before the meeting had started, there was a debate as to whether it should be cancelled.

Clerk of the course Ian Le Page declared the beach safe to race, but by that time the parents of the cadet and junior riders had decided it was too windy and wet and all had pulled out of racing.

On top of that, there was a delay finding enough marshals to stand out in the centre of the bay and the tide was not dropping as quickly as expected, which meant racing was late getting under way.

Even then the bike riders were warned not to ride too wide exiting the slip bend or they would be taking a very watery course down the back straight.

With practice over, the first two scratch races were held without incident, but trouble brewed in the first bike championship race.

Inexperienced start-line officials, instead of having the elastic start gate in a straight line, pulled it into a V-shape which meant the riders in the centre had an advantage over those on the outside.

Though the race was started, one rider rode into the middle to complain to the clerk of the course who had not spotted this start-line error.

After quick consultation, he decided to stop the race using the red flag and order a re-start with the correct positioning of the gate.

Unfortunately, Bougourd thought that he had completed three laps, more than half distance in a five-lap race, and saw no reason for it to be re-run.

The lap records, however, deemed that only two laps had been completed before the red flag was shown and Le Page stood by his decision.

Bougourd, not happy, put his bikes back onto their trailer and left the beach.

According to the rider, the matter is still to be resolved.

‘Until it is sorted with the club I’ve got no comment to make,’ he said yesterday.

Once all this was finally sorted out, it was back to racing and with Bougourd no longer present, all the other riders got on with some very close racing with Anthony Queripel taking the championship wins and Mike Clark the scratch races.

In the 200cc class Mark King once again was the man in charge but was being chased more by Phil Ferbrache than John Damarell, who was suffering bike problems on the very wet beach.

It was no surprise that even a number of the cars were suffering with water and electrical problems.

Mark Ozanne, having had difficulties with the Dulon at the previous meeting, brought out the Jaguar-powered Sierra, which clearly outclassed the two 1,100cc grass-track cars in the racing car class.

In the production cars, John Dean has moved down a class, bringing a 1,500cc Civic, and Nigel Ozanne brought out a 1,400cc Rover to give Eric Trump some competition.

The main event for this meeting was the 20-lap Victoria Trophy Handicap race and even Ozanne, with all the power available, just could not quite make up the four-lap advantage some of the slower cars had, so John Le Page just held off the hard-charging Trump, while first man away, Graham Jehan, managed to take third place.

With a quickly returning tide, again the bike riders were warned before commencing their last championship race of water coming near the outside of the course.

Though they completed one lap safely, Ian Le Page had no option but to once again show the red flag when one large wave suddenly encroached over all of the back straight and the marshals had to quickly collect the marker cones before they floated away.