The rain in Spain falls mainly ... on Armadale and the Edinburgh track staff.
In this, his latest missive, Edinburgh track staff reporter Ian Hawkins sums up a decidedly wet and dismal end to April.
Hello again
April has been a problem month! We have had one rain off (11th) and one Friday where it was not possible to arrange a suitable meeting in the gap between the Premier Trophy and the start of the Premier League.
We resumed on the 25th against Berwick which was another wet meeting, resulting in another mega clean-up session of the circuit, fence boards and all the greyhound track covers. This was not helped by the loss of the Wednesday session on the 28th due to the biggest floods that I have seen at Armadale (See photos of the pits area).
Friday was fortunately a dry day allowing us to complete cleaning up and for Doc to prepare a very good, dry racing surface with very good times, excellent racing from all the home riders, with a special mention to William Lawson, for the season's fastest time and a superb heat 13 win, Thomas Topinka and Shane Parker. We also wish our good mate Shane a speedy recovery following his crash while guesting for KL at Berwick on Saturday.
More work on a very dry track today (Wednesday 7th May) mainly watering to prevent the surface from blowing away! Also replaced and painted kickboards on the home straight.
The photographs are the Armadale equivalent of No 96 (an exciting glimpse into the behind scenes at Armadale) and a rare shot of a dry track.
Best wishes, Ian.
For those interested, the reports on the matches that Ian makes mention of can be found by clicking on the following links :
