Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Baker eyeing hat-trick of wins in Kernow Cup
SOUTH West Centre champion Joe Baker has won the Camel Vale Club’s annual Kernow Cup Trial for the past two years and the Lynton-based Sherco rider will be out to make it three in a row in this morning’s event at the Garker Valley group of sections, near St Blazey.
The meeting is also the first round of the Cornwall Centre Championship series and last year’s event attracted more than 100 starters, with a similar number expected to do battle again.
However, Baker may not have such an easy passage if world youth champion Billy Green or Cornwall’s Toby Martyn decide to contest the two-lap, 20-section event.
There are numerous other aces in the pack too, including George Edyvean, Stefan Goodman, Simon and Darren James, plus several South West Centre stars from the Devon side of the Tamar.
Many will be staying in the area overnight for the Camborne-Redruth Club’s Trispen Trial at Gilbert’s Combe, near Redruth, on Sunday.
This event does not normally attract as many as the Camel Vale Club’s event, but again championship points are at stake in a multi-lap ten-section contest.
However, it clashes with the Otter Vale Club’s annual Roy Golesworthy Trophy event at Wiscombe Park, in event looks like getting the year off to a cracking start and the two world champions Jeffrey Herlings (500cc) and George Prado (250cc) being among the first to enter along with Max Anstie Tommy Searle, Glenn Coldenhoff, Shaun Simpson and Ben Watson.
The Motorcycle Club of Great Britain’s annual long-distance Exeter Trial got underway last evening from starting points at Popham Airfield, near Basingstoke; Cirencester and Okehampton, and around 150 solos and sidecars, and as well as 400 cars converged at the Haynes Motor Museum at Sparkford for an hourlong supper break at around midnight.
After that, they faced a number of observed hills in Somerset and North Devon in the dark before arriving at the Crealy leisure park for a breakfast stop.
With that completed, they face a further dozen hills in Devon this morning before the finish on the Torquay seafront from around lunchtime today.
Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington is expected to be named Europe’s captain for the 2020 Ryder Cup on Tuesday.
Harrington has been the odds-on favourite to succeed Thomas Bjorn since Lee Westwood said in October that he would prefer to do the job in Rome in 2022, and described Harrington as the “better candidate” to lead the team at Whistling Straits.
And the European Tour has now called a press conference at its Wentworth headquarters on Tuesday, at which Harrington is set to be handed the task of retaining the trophy won in emphatic fashion at Le Golf National in Paris last summer.
Bjorn had suggested there was no need to rush into appointing his successor, but speaking during the Turkish Airlines Open at the end of October, Harrington was keen for a decision sooner rather than later.
“I keep getting asked and I’m trying to say it hasn’t been decided, but once you start talking about it eventually it starts looking like I think I am,” the 47-year-old Irishman said. “It puts me in an awkward position so I’d prefer the clarity.”
The captain is selected by a panel comprising the previous three captains – Bjorn, Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley – European Tour chief executive Keith Pelley and a member of the Players Committee.