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Coventry Bees Speedway Team were beaten 49-41 at Perry Barr on Thursday.
The Bees were without Chris Harris, Scott Nicholls and Adam Roynon were expected to lose. but they had a good go.
Harris’s stand-in, Christian Henry, unfortunately ended the night injured after suffering knee ligament damage in a jarring Heat 11 collision with Sebastian Ulamek which left the Pole with a knock to the head, and also brought Aaron Summers down in the process.
It had been Summers who got the Bees off to a flying start by defeating Bjarne Pedersen in Heat 1, and in fact a steady stream of Coventry race wins followed – the only problem being that the Danny King/Ben Barker combination twice netted 5-1s for the Brummies in the first five races.
But Bees battled back from an early six-point deficit with a 5-1 from Edward Kennett and Kenni Larsen in Heat 7, the duo taking advantage when Ulamek went wide, and that followed up a super ride from Summers in Heat 4 to pass both Ulamek and Martin Smolinski and team up with lively reserve Michal Szczepaniak, who won his first two races.
An unfortunate incident in Heat 10 saw Kennett disqualified, as he locked up on turn two when in a clear lead, forcing the following Pedersen to take avoiding action and giving Josh Auty no option but to put his bike down.
The re-run saw the Brummies go four points up, but Bees battled on and consecutive wins for Kennett in Heats 12 and 13, backed up by a third for guest Rohan Tungate, saw them reduce the gap to two points.
A firm move by Barker in Heat 14 sent him inside Larsen on turn three as the Brummies edged another couple of points clear, leaving Bees needing a 5-1 from the last race to draw.
But in the event it was the home side who took the 5-1 through Barker and Pedersen, with Larsen just edged out going into lap two, and that race result left Bees just short of the mark required for what would have been a very worthy point.
BIRMINGHAM 49: Ben Barker 12+2, Bjarne Pedersen 12+1, Danny King 9+1, Martin Smolinski 7+3, Josh Auty 5+1, Nicolas Covatti 2, Sebastian Ulamek 2.
BUILDBASE BEES 41: Kenni Larsen 11+1, Aaron Summers 10+2, Michal Szczepaniak 10, Edward Kennett 9, Rohan Tungate 1, Christian Henry 0, Scott Nicholls r/r.
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