7:00am Thursday 2nd July 2009
By Phil Chard
BJARNE Pedersen was quick to insist he did not want to become embroiled in a war of words with Tai Woffinden after the Wolves rider unceremoniously knocked him off on the fourth bend last night.
Pirates’ captain was catapulted into the fence by Britain’s young gun after Woffinden tried to cut inside the Dane on the third lap of heat 14 to steal the lead at Wimborne Road.
Pedersen, fortunately, escaped injury, with Woffinden, who also fell, avoiding injury as well on a dramatic night when Poole Castle Cover held their nerve to topple title-chasing Wolves 46-44.
The ugly incident happened after Pedersen had driven hard under Woffinden and Ty Proctor on the first lap to take the lead in a race he had to win if Pirates were to triumph.
Woffinden chased Poole’s skipper hard after being passed on the inside of the third bend but Pedersen covered every move until the last turn of their third circuit.
As Pedersen went wide, Woffinden tried his luck up the curb, only to lift briefly and plough straight into the Dane.
Poole’s fans in a bumper 3,000 crowd went wild as the two riders picked themselves up off the shale and walked towards each other, meeting with their heads locked helmet to helmet as they argued about what had just happened.
Pedersen and Woffinden had to be dragged away from each other by track staff and mechanics as their ill-tempered confrontation cooled down.
Referee David Watters excluded Woffinden as the prime cause of the stoppage, gifting Pirates a 4-2 that gave them a 43-41 lead going into the last race.
Peter Karlsson took the chequered flag in a thrice-started heat 15, but Chris Holder and Hans Andersen, who worked overtime to peg Fredrik Lindgren back in fourth, got the 3-3 which gave Poole only their fourth league triumph of the term.
Looking back on the heat 14 dust up, Pedersen said: “I just had no place to go.
“He (Woffinden) was just coming very sharply into the corner and went straight into me, so it was the right decision by the ref.
“At the end of the day, it’s just racing. It’s done now. I just want to move on. My life is too short to look back at all these things.
“I just want to move forward and move on.”
Some enraged Poole fans were shouting for Pedersen to physically hit out at Woffinden, but the Dane said: “It was him (Tai) who started to push me (on the track after the crash).
“It was a stupid thing at Cardiff (when Scott Nicholls and Emil Sayfutdinov had an on-track punch-up in the British Grand Prix on Saturday) and it’s not a part of sport I want to be involved in.
“Luckily I just kept calm. To be honest, the most important thing is that we won.”
An unrepentant Woffinden said: “It started at Coventry at the start of last year when Bjarne nailed me in a guest meeting.
“He then nailed me in my first race tonight going over the finish line.
“I just went for a gap (in heat 14). There was definitely space because he went into the corner wider and I used the inside line.
“If there’s a gap, I’ll take it, just like Nicki Pedersen would in a GP.
“I crashed, he crashed. Let’s get over it and get on with our next meeting.”
Asked if he should have been excluded, Woffinden said: “From the ref’s view ‘yes’. From Bjarne’s view ‘yes’ and from my view ‘yes’.
“But it’s just racing. If there’s a gap, I’ll go for it and I would in the same circumstances again.”
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