16 Mar 2012

RAFCA Has Flying Ambition in 2012




After a break of nearly 20 years away from the sport he once dominated as a child, Matt Haywood is back for more. At the tender age of nine, Matt became interested in BMX racing, riding for Barnstaple Bandits BMX Club, racing mainly at local and regional level. Once in his teens his performances began to improve whilst riding at Regional level. Matt went on to become No 2 in the South West Region when he was 16 and maintained that ranking until he stopped racing in 1994. Matt also raced at National level for a couple of seasons, including one season at International where he finished 7th overall. In 1993 he made his first British Championships Final and finished 3rd whilst also qualifying for 2 World Championships but was unable to attend these.Now Matt is back, he recently took part in the British Cycling (BC) Regional Series at Gosport BMX Track and took the opportunity to get a little race practice in for the start of the season. With a full gate of 8 riders and the fact that he hadn't gated in nearly 2 decades he thought it be prudent to see what he could remember.All was going well until the second corner on the first moto when it all went wrong over a small set of doubles and he ended up sliding along tarmac on his left side, thankfully his body armour did its job but his nice new RAF Cycling jersey didn't fair so well.However, this was only a minor setback and Matt managed to settle down and post some credible results with the commentator and fellow riders surprised to see him jumping the big doubles as none of the other mature riders seemed to take the chance. At the end of his first race back he had managed to post the following:Moto 1 - 8thMoto 2 - 2ndMoto 3 - 1st Final - 2ndAs there was only 8 riders, the final is classed as a 4th Moto so the end place scoring matrix placed Matt as being 3rd place overall. Not bad for a BMX Bandit !