The pace notes are coming that much quicker and at every corner he’s teetering on the edge of going off the road
The pace notes are coming that much quicker and at every corner he’s teetering on the edge of going off the road.”That Grist is prepared to be conveyed to the edge is a measure of his faith in McRae’s car control. “When you’re with a top-line driver, although he’s much, much faster than most other people, his ability is also so much better than most other people’s. You know what they can do.”Even the best have their moments and Grist admits the pair were fortunate to avoid a big accident on a mountain stage of the Acropolis rally, just before their enforced retirement. They flew over a hump on the rocky road, flat in six, and dropped a rear wheel into a ditch.Grist said: “I expected us to barrel-roll sideways down the hill into the valley and you don’t stop easily in a situation like that. But we hit a big lump of I don’t know what, and it kicked us back on the road.
It could have been pretty nasty.”Their luck was soon to run out. “It had been jumping out of gear a few times but we thought it could get through the day,” Grist said. “Then it spat it out repeatedly and in the end we had only first gear, so we’d no chance of going on. It’s a bitter disappointment when you’re fighting for the championship.”I think we were a little spoiled in the early part of the season That good start wasn’t expected. We’re still going for it and by the end of the year we should be very strong.
But if we can’t do it this year we’ll be looking to come back with a vengeance in 2000 and take the championship then.”n Gwyndaf Evans’ miserable Mobil 1 British Championship season continued yesterday in the second stage of the Scottish Rally as the Welsh driver lost three minutes after his SEAT Ibiza punctured. Finland’s Tapio Laukkanen took advantage to finish over 20 seconds ahead of his compatriot Jarmo Kytoleh to take the overall lead from David Higgins, who was another six seconds adrift.. BOARD MEMBERS of the British Horse Trials Association were in conference for hours here yesterday afternoon as the inquiry into the Coral Cove positive dope test case reached its final stages. Bill Henson, a member of the board and director of the Bramham Horse and Hound International Horse Trials, emerged to say: “I am absolutely amazed by what I’ve learnt today. I am shattered at what has gone on in horse trials.” A long-awaited statement was due to be made yesterday evening.
Polly Phillipps, the rider of Coral Cove, would have liked an inquiry to have been held in December, after the news that the horse’s second urine sample, taken at last year’s World Equestrian Games, had tested positive to salicylic acid at a level above the permitted threshold.”We’ve lost a lot of business,” Phillipps said of her own veterinary practice and her husband’s horse-dealing business. “It seems cruel that we have taken all the flak for it when we have done nothing wrong.” Phillipps, who is lying eighth with Coral Cove after yesterday’s dressage test, expected her name to be cleared when the statement eventually emerged.Meanwhile, Blyth Tait retained his overnight lead on Welton Envoy after the dressage phase.
The New Zealander also moved into fifth place with last year’s Burghley winner Chesterfield, who has had a troublesome year so far.Chesterfield was withdrawn before the dressage at Badminton last month suffering from whiplash. A couple of weeks later he bashed his head on a fence at Chatsworth and had to have stitches.Pippa Funnell, who retained second place on Rainbow Magic, is now ahead of Leslie Law, whose test on Shear H20 was the best that was achieved yesterday, earning praise for Chris Bartle who has been a “tremendous help” in improving Shear H20’s dressage – so much so that the horse is now ahead of Bartle’s own mount, Oscar, who is lying sixth.BRAMHAM HORSE AND HOUND INTERNATIONAL THREE-DAY EVENT (Wetherby, Yorks) After dressage: 1 Welton Envoy (B Tait, NZ) 62 penalties; 2 Rainbow Magic (P Funnell, GB) 66; 3 Shear H20 (L Law, GB) 74; 4 Just a Mission (M Todd, NZ) 75; 5 Chesterfield (B Tait, NZ) 76; 6 Oscar (C Bartle, GB) 79.. IAIN PERCY won the Olympic single-handed Finn Class by the narrowest of margins in the European Championships in Ostend yesterday. He held on to pip the reigning Olympic gold medallist and world champion, Mateusz Kusnierewicz of Poland, by one point in the nine-race series.
