Day 4MAYO missing! One of ten British victims of Thursday's rain-drenched massacre, he was the second of our Vase aces to pack up.Dazed after being knocked out, when he hit a tree stump and was revived by Zem-brzuski during the morning, May later stripped the spark plug threads of his alloy cylinder head."My Maico wouldn't start at the lunch check. As I got the plug out, I felt it jam. I feared the worst but put in another plug. It blew out four miles down the road." Our Trophy team was also down to two men after Brick replaced bent shockers, crashed trying to make up time, and failed to beat the clock. With the notable exception of Wales MCC, our club teams were literally wiped out. Suffering from hypothermia, Scotland's Keith Roden (Maico). was so cold first aiders wouldn't let him go on. Edmondson took it all in his stride, save for a disastrous special test. After two spills, a course marking tape wrapped around his foot and pulled him off. To cap it all, he whiskered a plug. It looked like goodbye to his gold.But Britain's miseries were incidental to the major shocks of one of the toughest ISDE battles for years. For even the Czechs were struggling!They slipped from first to sixth in the Vase after Zdenek Mavljjc (Jawa) seized. his big end and the East Germans soared ahead. And Czech Trophy rider Janous was surrounded by American, German and Swedish head hunters as he stripped his Jawa after a broken gudgeon pin circlip damaged piston and cylinder. Janous was 43 minutes late. But the Czechs cheerfully argued a Trophy dispute when Sweden's Torbjorn Jansson (Husqvarna) was provisionally excluded for outside assistance. Jansson broke a chain tensioner. He claimed he did not break the rules but merely replaced the tensioner with the good one on the other side of the rear fork.With more than a hint of suspicion about illegal helps after the Janous piston trouble, the Swede was allowed to start on Friday pending an investigation by the international jury.Out went Liverpool clubman Jones. He broke a shocker and torsion of the rear fork broke the bracket of the other. Alex Shennan had three punctures, Gwyn Barraclough's gearbox gave up, and Brad Jones was late after a low tension lead breakage identical to Zembrzuski's. With two days to go, the Brits were down to seven. Day 5SWEDEN'S hopes of taking the Trophy for the second time in 59 years were knocked out by a double blow as Friday's gruelling show down took a heavy toll.No Trophy team remained intact before the jury decided there was insufficient evidence to exclude Janous and the Czechs withdrew their case against Janssen. But the Swedes lost two other Trophy men.Two boys phoned ISDE headquarters to report an attempted Swedish fiddle after Gus-tavson's Husky expired with gearbox trouble. Alerted by radio, officials caught him redhanded with the wrong bike. He was excluded on the spot.But the incident was not without humour. A Czech outrider found the stricken Husky in a bush. He planned to get a gang to retrieve it and present it to the Swedes. But somebody beat them to it. The bike vanished into thin air. With Per Gronberg's Yamaha among the day's 56 casualties, the Swedes were down to third. The Czechs lost Belsky. houred out after his engine conked. The Americans lost Wally Wilson, with an arm injury. And they sweated on the top line till Scott Harding came home with only l0mins to spare.Not surprisingly, the Americans weren't too happy about the jury's controversial vote which cleared the Czechs. Voting was 50 -50 so jury president Tage Magnusson, of Sweden, swung the issue in their favour.The other teams were decimated. The West Germans lost a second Trophy man when Heino Buse went out with a sick gearbox. Italy's once glorious team broke up as Alessandro Gritti went out with a snapped front wheel spindle and Guglielmo And-reini ran out of cogs.Britain's Trophy squad was down to one after Kerr punctured, crashed, and ran out of time.Brad Jones had a gutsy ride after his front brake gave up the ghost. Plain was 17 minutes late after his chain came off and he had an .argument with a tree. And Edmondson stupefied a careless commissar as he scattered his entourage in a mad. dash to the finish.Day 6SEVEN mile traffic queue for the final moto cross test at the new Sveperek grand prix stadium heralded a predictable Trophy win for the Czechs. The races, which followed a shorter cross country route, were rigged for the benefit of television crews, with three Czechs on 500 Jawas dominating one of the 250 heats! After a week in which special test performances were overshadowed by the rigours of daily two lap routes totalling nearly 1000 miles, the outcome of, the final test was academic. But Edmondson tried to live with two Czechs until he tired of Emil Cunderlik's hard braking tactics. "I nearly hit him several times so I gave it up and settled for third place," said Britain's star performer. After winning three years in a row, the Italian team manager said: "We never expected to win here." It was the first time for four years Jawa's national heroes have won the Trophy and their 15th team victory since 1947. They need one more win to equal Britain's record in a contest we have not won since 1953.
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