Best African Team Ever

[daveallan81]

Belmont Hyundai from the tiny Central African village of Joppa (pronounced Yoh-par). He took up the sport when he came to study in Edinburgh in the late seventies and although he never progressed beyond second half junior races he was a firm crowd favourite, perhaps best remembered for riding four laps wearing full ceremonial African dress to celebrate his graduation from university.

 

Shortly afterwards he returned to his old village to work as a doctor and as a parting gift the Monarchs gave him the track spare which he proudly displays in the foyer of his practice. Although having never returned to these shores he retains an insoluble affection for Scotland's capital city and its' speedway team and he remains to this day the only black African speedway rider.

 

"The man's a maniac!" I hear you cry. That may very well be the case, however for one brief but glorious period in 1988/89 one person in the speedway world bought that story, and it's subsequent embelishments, hook, line and sinker and I couldn't resist posting it here.

 

23rd September 1988 and the whole family have turned out for the Scottish Open at Powderhall. Amid general pre-meeting milling around, my mother asked to peruse my programme. "What's this?" she asks, pointing to the sponsors box for heat 19. Belmont Hyundai (Joppa) it reads. For those unaware, it was a car company - I take it Belmont later went down the pan - based in one of Edinburgh's quaint little hamlets. To me it was a chance too good to miss.

 

You have no idea how far this went. The story got bulked up - his wife ran a bar called Powderhall which, loosley translated, meant 'place of sliding sideways'. She started telling her pals about this amazing African rider who cleared a track in the jungle to race his bike round. Next thing she's raking through old Edinburgh programmes at track shops for pictures and asking folk if they'd ever heard of this guy. One night my dad finds her with the old Basildon Bond out writing to Speedway Star and worse, the Sunday Post. Never been in a library in her life now she's down there poring through books looking for bloomin' Yohpar.

 

Fortunately the end of the season was nigh because I think she was getting onto our game as everyone she asked had never heard of old Belmont and Yohpar remained beyond the knowledge of civilisation. It went on for a couple of weeks into the close season before the joke kind of petered away and/or we found some other way to torment her. We just assumed we'd been rumbled, we usually were.

 

So the 1989 season rolls round and we're on our way to the first match at Powderhall. The road we came in you crossed a large junction which had traffic lights, can't remember the name of the road. We're stopped at the lights, first in the queue and across the road to the right is a garage - a Belmont Hyundai garage. A wee surprised 'hmm' noise emanates from my mother in the passenger seat...

 

"Oh look, that rider has opened his own garage."

 

I thought I was going to laugh my lungs out. My dad had to drive the last bit to the track because I was incapacitated in the back. God knows it may be the dullest two minutes of your life, but where else am I ever going to post this?

 

So here's to you Belmont, and here's to it not getting as far as the missing persons report, Crimewatch and Interpol digging up the centre green at Powderhall - so many ideas, so little time.