A room full of stars gathered at the prestigious ACU Awards & Presentations day held at the superb National Motorcycle Museum on Saturday 23rd January.
Over 200 guests gathered for the presentation of the Youth Awards at lunchtime which saw James Shanes - the 2015 ACU Masters Grass Track Solo champion enter the Imperial Suite on his 500cc machine. Video clips of the various Youth disciplines mixed in with the Awards presented to the Youth winners made for a special occasion which gets bigger and better each year.
The Adult Awards took place in the evening which saw 1976 World Speedway Champion and one of the most iconic figures ever in World Speedway – Peter Collins MBE - on hand to present the Track Racing and Speedway Awards. Again lots of video clips to showcase the various ACU disciplines and one of the main highlights of the evening saw the ACU RT Keedwell Group Solo British Expert Trials Champion – Dan Thorpe ride his bike up onto the stage in typical Trials fashion much to the delight of the 400+ audience.
Probably the biggest cheer of the night went out to the Great British team that for the first time ever won the FIM World Team Long Track final with Andrew Appleton, Glen Phillips, Richard Hall, James Shanes and Team Manager Mitch Godden collecting this very special trophy which has been crafted from melted down trophies and medals which used to belong to the late Don Godden.
Equally, Becky Cook and Donna Fox representing the ladies from the Great British Womens Trials Des Nations team were on hand to collect their Awards as were members of the ISDE Trophy and Junior Trophy Teams. The team members who achieved 2
nd place in the FIME Sidecar Cross of European Nations collected their Trophy with Team Manager Martin Guildford. Iwan Roberts and Toby Martyn were presented their FIM and FIME Trials Awards and from the world of Road Racing, Drag & Sprint, Alan Founds and Tom Peters collected their trophy for finishing 3
rd place in the FIM F2 World Trophy championship and Ian King and Gary Bowe collected their European Drag Racing Awards.
ACU Chairman Brian Higgins commented “This is the second year we have held the ACU Awards at the National Motorcycle Museum. The Museum is a wonderful venue and just the right venue for the ACU to be able to showcase all our various sport disciplines. Over the last couple of years the ACU Awards has gone from strength to strength. Lots of video clips with one or two Champions riding their bikes to the stage just adds to this special occasion. I even rode my own Trials bike through the audience to the stage this year and that was a really nice thing to do. The Museum also allowed any person with a ticket for the Awards free entry to look around and see the wonderful display of motorcycles which added great value to the weekend”.