CYCLE SPEEDWAY: Interest in new Saturday club soars

Interest in a new Saturday morning cycling club near Rugby has been so great that organisers are already planning to extend it beyond its original six-week run.

The Dirt Bike Club, held at the Brandon Bees Cycle Speedway track in Bretford Playing Fields, aims to introduce young people to the thrills and spills of Cycle Speedway – Britain’s most exciting cycle sport.

Youngsters and teenagers have flocked to the venue on the first two Saturdays of the new club – with organisers running out of bikes on both occasions. Arrangements have now been made to provide more bikes for this Saturday’s (July 23) staging of the club.

A registered British Cycling coach supervises all the sessions of the club, which runs from 10am-11.30am. It has attracted backing from British Cycling and the Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull Sports Partnership.

And now, due to the success of the venture, organisers are set to extend the Dirt Bike Club throughout the rest of the summer and are hoping to set-up a permanent racing club at the newly restored venue.

In another positive move, the best available eight of the newcomers to the Dirt Bike Club are set to race for the Brandon Bees in a series of Tuesday night matches at Bretford Playing Fields. Full dates are to be announced shortly.

The first of these matches will be this Tuesday (July 26), when the new Brandon Bees team entertain Birmingham, starting at 7.15pm. There will be additional races for any newcomers on this night.

A spokesman said: “We are delighted with the initial success of the Dirt Bike Club and numbers have exceeded our expectations. We have restored a valuable community facility for young people to use and now we are providing them with opportunities to compete in race meetings”.

The Dirt Bike Club continues this Saturday (July 23) and on July 30, August 6 and 13. Further events will be announced at the last scheduled staging.

To help newcomers and satnav users find it, the full address of the Dirt Bike Club is: Bretford Playing Fields, Brandon Road, Bretford, CV23 0LA.

For more information on the Brandon Bees Cycle Speedway club and the Dirt Bike Club, please ring: 07400 993999.