Junior World Championships: Champions come from everywhere!
The Junior World Championship is a true platform for pilots who would otherwise not be able to participate in the high-quality European competition or even American Loretta's or Mini O's. This weekend we discovered wonderful talents from Australia, Japan and Venezuela, among others.
In the 65cc class, for example, we received a great overall victory from Australia's Jett Lawrence. The boy from the land of koalas defeated the American Jett Reynolds in the first round of the lightest class. In the second heat, Lawrence only had to finish second behind the Japanese Jo Shimoda to take the world title. This Japanese managed to climb onto the podium with a fourth place and a victory, he finished second overall ahead of the American Jeremy Ryan. This American excelled in endurance by finishing third twice. No Belgians managed to qualify in the 65cc classes.
The 85cc guys had to look forward to seeing how well 'our' Jago Geerts had recovered from his broken collarbone. The answer turned out to be good but not good enough. The man from Balen showed a lot of character and went deep, perhaps too deep for this age. He finished his heats in fifth and ninth place. Good for fifth place overall. The guys fighting for the win were (another Australian) with former 65cc World Champion Caleb Grotehues, Kim Savaste and the Dane Mikkel Haarup. In the second heat we saw a fierce duel for fourth position, this duel between Savaste and Grotehues was only about one thing, the title. But after a jump we saw Savaste make a mistake and Grotehues fell with him. Both did their very best to get away as quickly as possible, but the best thing in this crash was done by Kim Savaste. He did his best in the match by falling, life can be strange. After this crash, Kim quickly recovered and steamrolled to his 85cc world title. In the general classification, Australian Caleb Grotehues fell two points short, Mikkel Haarup occupied the third podium spot.
Davy Pootjes was missing from the 125cc class due to injury. This was unfortunate for the Dutch, but it did not spoil the fun for Brian Hsu. The Taiwanese German dominated the entire field and wiped the floor with the opposition. The man won both heats by a large margin and is also more than deserved the 2014 world champion. Fortunately, we saw more fighting behind the German. Fight for those last two spots on the podium. The victor of Lommel, Alvin Östlund was one of the candidates for a podium place, but so were David Herbreteau, Ivan Baranov, Thomass Sileika. But a bit out of nowhere, Venezuelan Lorenzo Locurcio took second overall podium place. The third podium in turn went to Alvin Östlund. The Belgians had mixed success. Nolan Cordens managed to achieve a more than good result everywhere with a 24th place, Nathan Renkens did not do too badly with a 25th place. The man who disappointed the most was undoubtedly Cyril Genot. The Kemea Yamaha pilot clearly struggles with the harder tracks. The result was poor with a 30th place.
The team classification was also won by America in 2014. The 'Star & Stripes' managed to stay ahead of Germany and France.
Text: Matthias Van Eeckhoven – Photo: Frederik 'VePix' Van Eeckhoven
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