trophies & awards

All of the £12,000 will go straight back into the rider’s pockets as they can pick it up in prize money throughout the season. Each race weekend will see the winner going home with £200, second place man £100, third will receive £50, fourth £30 and £20 for fifth place.

The popular Express Insurance Top Gun award in back again this year and it will give £100 to the first Orange Jacket wearing Novice licence holder to finish. This is a great incentive for new riders to push hard and progress in each race.

At the end of the season the R&G Racing Suzuki GSX-R Trophy winner will pick up a cool £3000 for his efforts all year, £2000 will go to second place and £1000 for third. The highest placed Novice licence holder in the Championship will also receive the Express Insurance Top Gun end of season award of £500.

The 10-round Championship has full Suzuki backing and takes in numerous British Superbike circuits which gives riders track knowledge for when they decide to step up to the next level as many Trophy riders have done.
Originally posted at VisorDown.com.

The bottle in his hand was already half-empty, but Cole Hamels seemed a bottomless source of bubbly.

In the soggy celebration of Philadelphia’s World Series championship, Hamels stood before the plastic shield protecting his locker, giddily drenched in sparkling wine. The bottle bore the label of Domaine Ste. Michelle, a French-sounding brand imported all the way from Washington state, and the 24-year-old pitcher had been branded the Series’ Most Valuable Player.

“This will be a trivia question for the next couple hundred years,” Hamels said, happily. “And I get to be a part of it.”

Rancho Bernardo’s precocious left-hander had done nothing of note on the last night of the tournament. He was a uniformed spectator to the three-inning speed date that completed Monday’s suspended Game 5 as a 4-3 Philadelphia victory over the Tampa Bay Rays. Yet for a few batters on this brief, bizarre but rain-free evening, Hamels stood to be the winning pitcher on a night he never needed to warm up.

Jayson Werth’s bloop single scored pinch hitter Geoff Jenkins with one out in the bottom of the sixth inning to enable the Phillies to break the 2-2 tie Hamels had helped forge Monday night. Hamels was still the pitcher of record, and in line to become the first pitcher to win five starts in the same postseason, until Rocco Baldelli’s seventh-inning home run temporarily re-tied the score.

A couple of hundred years hence, trivia experts may recall that Phillies left-hander J.C. Romero was credited with the victory because Pedro Feliz singled through the Rays’ drawn-in infield to score pinch runner Eric Bruntlett in the bottom of the seventh inning. For contemporary Phillies fans, every detail of this drama will be recounted and savored for generations.

For the first time in 28 years, since Tug McGraw struck out Willie Wilson at a ballpark since imploded, the Phillies are champions of baseball.

Before Saturday’s Game 3, country singer Tim McGraw sprinkled some of his late father’s ashes on the pitcher’s mound at Citizens Bank Park. Last night, Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer prevailed on the groundskeepers to exhume the pitching rubber for his personal collection.

Hamels, who took home the shinier souvenir, confessed that the time finally hadcome for him to start a trophy case.

“This is the easiest game I ever had to deal with,” he said. “I didn’t have to do a thing, and I was in the starting lineup.”

Hamels had pitched six innings during Monday night’s deluge, and he began last night’s proceedings as the next scheduled hitter. Phillies manager Charlie Manuel chose Jenkins to bat in Hamels’ place, and the pinch-hitter responded with a full-count double to right-center field against Tampa Bay reliever Grant Balfour.

Playing at home, Manuel played for one run. Jimmy Rollins moved Jenkins to third base with a sacrifice bunt. Werth then popped a bloop single just out of the reach of Rays’ second baseman Akinori Iwamura.

“The wind played tricks on Aki big-time,” said Tampa Bay’s Cliff Floyd, the designated hitter idled by National League rules. “ . . . We haven’t played in these type of conditions all year.

“We just didn’t play the same type ball (compared to the regular season). It’s not a frustrating thing. It’s a learning thing.”

One of the harder lessons the Rays learned was taught by Phillies second baseman Chase Utley. After Baldelli’s one-out homer tied the score in the seventh, Jason Bartlett singled and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt.

Iwamura then hit a ground ball that left Utley no play at first base, but his bluff throw emboldened Bartlett to try to score from second base. Utley’s peg to catcher Carlos Ruiz resulted in a third-out tag play and erased the last Rays player to reach third base.

“I was just running hard and (third base coach Tom) Foley sent me and I tried to score,” Bartlett said. “It’s a hard baseball play. If I’m not hustling, maybe he stops me. But that’s how you should play – hustle all the time.”

Pat Burrell opened Philadelphia’s seventh inning with a double to deep center field, a 1-1 curve ball Tampa Bay reliever J.P. Howell immediately regretted. Replaying the pitch in his mind, Howell thought Burrell was “cheating” on the breaking pitch and would therefore have been susceptible to a fastball.

Bruntlett ran for Burrell, moving to third base on a groundout by Shane Victorino, scoring the winning run on Feliz’s single through the middle.

Phillies reliever Brad Lidge, whose neglected to blow a save all season, closed out the Rays in the ninth, striking out pinch hitter Eric Hinske for the final out.

Hamels was standing on the top step of the dugout when the game ended and was soon in the middle of the celebratory scrum near the pitcher’s mound. His first emotion, he said later, was relief, but there was a lot to the experience he was still trying to process.

“As I go into this offseason and each week creeps closer and closer to a new, fresh season, I might think about it more,” he said. “I know people will look at me differently, probably expect more out of me.”

For starters, they will expect him to get to work on that trophy case.

Originally Written By Tim Sullivan, SignOnSanDiego.com

Trophy news from Wichita Falls, TX

Forty years of memories can overwhelm a guy — especially when they rush back all at once.

When Walter Lee, 49, answered the phone in his Fort Walton Beach, Fla., home Thursday, he couldn’t believe his ears.

His grandfather’s beloved racing trophy — the one Lee was promised as a child — had finally been recovered.

“For the last 40 years, I have wondered whatever happened to that trophy,” Lee said. “It was the only thing I had left from my grandpa.”

Lee’s grandfather, Johnny Lee, won the large racing trophy in 1924 at the Texas-Oklahoma Fair.

It disappeared for decades. Then, a few years ago, Paul White found the silver-plated racing trophy in his Houston home.

He almost trashed it.

Luckily, White recognized the value in the 1942 relic before tossing it in the dumpster. He decided to find out where it belonged.

White contacted Camron Ward of the Wichita Falls Founders’ Lions Club, sponsor of the Texas-Oklahoma Fair, to see if a rightful owner could be found.

The Times Record News published a story on the trophy Tuesday, and within days the mystery was solved.

According to the Sept. 30, 1924, edition of the Wichita Daily Times, Johnny Lee drove a Dodge Special to victory with the fastest mile time — 1 minute, 6.5 seconds — a half-second faster than the record.

Julie Coley, genealogist and TRN research consultant, worked for several days trying to locate someone from the Lee family, so the relic could be returned.

It wasn’t an easy search.

After poring over death records, old newspapers, genealogy Web sites and old appraisal listings, her hunt ended with Walter.

She made the call.

“He was really unsure at first,” Coley said. “When I mentioned the trophy, he was so excited. He remembered actually holding it as a child.”

Lee’s father passed away when he was 3 years old, severing connections to that side of his family, so he never got to meet his racing legend of a grandfather.

“I’ve seen pictures of him, heard stories,” Lee said. “He raced the circuit and made lots of money.”

As a child, Lee listened earnestly to stories of his grandpa — one in particular still stands out.

Grandpa was a rounder and a rebel, Lee said.

“When my uncles were young, my grandpa decided he was going to drive up on the railroad tracks,” Lee said. “He let the air out of the tires. They got pretty nervous when a train started coming.”

The train chugged along, headed straight for the Model A, and Johnny Lee jumped it off the tracks.

“They remembered it all their lives,” Lee said.

Not only was he a racer, and a bit of a daredevil, but also an ace mechanic.

“He liked experimenting and inventing stuff,” Lee said. “But I believe he always raced.”

Along with hearing the stories, Lee looked through photo albums stored in his uncle’s old Army footlocker from World War II, along with the 1924 Texas-Oklahoma Fair racing trophy.

When his uncles died, the footlocker was given away.

Lee was devastated at losing his grandpa’s things and dedicated a lot of time trying to locate them. He finally gave up in 1980.

“It was so long ago,” Lee said. “I was just hitting dead-ends.”

With the help of Coley, the grateful descendant finally found his lost treasure.

“I think what’s kind of neat about it is his uncle had promised this to him,” Ward said. “I guess it was meant to be.”

Lee was able to recall what the trophy looked like to a tee, Ward said.

The trophy will be on display, along with articles showcasing Johnny Lee, at the 2008 Texas-Oklahoma Fair from Sept. 16-20. After that, it will be sent back to Lee.

“The memories themselves are worth it, but I would definitely like to see it again,” Lee said. “It has brought back a lot of memories, good memories.”

Trophy News from Michigan

A wheelchair-bound Michigan teen got a special gift from one of his heroes over the weekend. Pat and Teresa Byrnes took their son Cody to the Michigan International Speedway so he could see his favorite driver, Carl Edwards, race. “Carl happened to be walking by and we gave him a thumbs up and Cody gave him a thumbs up and he saw his flag waiving on the back of Cody’s chair. And so he stopped, turned around and came back and he came over and he signed his wheelchair and he signed his shirt,” said Teresa Byrnes.

The Byrnes were already excited that Cody got to meet his hero, but they weren’t prepared for what Carl Edwards told Cody next. “He looked at him and he said, ‘Hey buddy, I’ll tell you, if I win that trophy today, now that’s if I win, I’ll give you that trophy‘,” Teresa recalled.

The Byrnes say they began to realize Edwards could win the award when he moved from the 27th spot to first place in about 60 laps. Pat Byrnes says that’s the most nervous he’s ever been during a race. Edwards did win that race. Carl Edwards signed the trophy for Cody with the initials NGU, which means never give up.

“Cody, everyday he wakes up and sees it. It’s like he’s realizing it’s really his and he’ll get excited and squeal, for someone to work so hard to get that trophy and then to say, ‘Here, you can have it’. That is the kindest gesture anybody has ever done,” said Teresa.

Originally Written by Mike Webster at NBC