Rain forces delay to Pirates star Holder's World Cup bid (From Thisisdorset)

Rain forces delay to Pirates star Holder's World Cup bid

7:17pm Saturday 18th July 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

PIRATES star Chris Holder’s bid to lift the World Cup for the first time has been put back until tomorrow after rain washed out tonight’s final in Poland.

Holder and the rest of his Australia team will go up against Sweden, Russia and Poland at Leszno on Sunday at 10am British time.

The Poole Castle Cover rider, who had seen the Leszno track waterlogged by heavy rain, told Sky Sports: “It was the right decision to call tonight’s meeting off.

“We would have to be swimming races out there.

“It’s really wet and it would not have been a good final.

“It would not have been fair for anyone to go ahead with it.”

Holder, whose side finished fourth in last year’s final at Vojens behind champions Denmark, Poland and Sweden, added: “The track is an excellent race track and we (the Australian riders) all go well on it.

“But if we had raced tonight it wouldn’t have been very good on a wet track.

“We made a mess of it in the final last year and we hope to do better this time.

“Tomorrow will hopefully be a bit drier and that will suit us guys.”

It is believed the unusual re-arranged start time of 10am has been set so that a full programme of Polish League fixtures, which include most of the World Cup final riders, can go ahead tomorrow night as usual.

Poole-based Adam Shields, who crashed heavily in his final race on Jason Crump’s bike as Australia won the race-off at Leszno on Thursday, has confirmed he has a broken collarbone.

The Lakeside star said he would be sidelined for “three to four weeks.”

World Cup final team line-ups have been declared as: Sweden : 1 Jonas Davidsson, 2 Fredrik Lindgren, 3 Antonio Lindback, 4 Andreas Jonsson, 5 David Ruud. Team manager: Tobias Johansson.

Australia : 1 Davey Watt, 2 Troy Batchelor, 3 Leigh Adams, 4 Chris Holder, 5 Jason Crump. Team manager: Craig Boyce.

Russia: 1 Renat Gafurov, 2 Emil Sayfutdinov, 3 Roman Pavazhny, 4 Denis Gizatullin, 5 Grigory Laguta. Team manager: Oleg Volochov.

Poland: 1 Krzysztof Kasprzak, 2 Piotr Protasiewicz, 3 Jarek Hampel, 4 Tomasz Gollob, 5 Adrian Miedzinski. Team manager: Marek Cieslak.

Referee: Istvan Darago (Hungary).

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)