The opening meeting of the season at Arena-Essex, witnessed by special guests Greg Hancock and former Hammer Leigh Adams, was marred by a horrific crash involving present Arena star Leigh Lanham and the Isle of Wight rider Phillipe Berge.

Entering the first turn to the third lap of heat 10, the pair locked together and both riders went crashing alarmingly through the safety-fence.

The initial diagnosis of the injury toll was a broken femur for Lanham with Frenchman Berge sustaining a broken bone in his neck together with a broken arm.

Both track ambulances were quickly on the scene with the riders receiving lengthy treatment on the track before being taken to hospital.

With the prospect of a considerable delay before the vehicles returned - 45 minutes was the anticipated time - the promoters took the decision to abandon the meeting.

The weekend news of Lanham was more encouraging.

After an operation to pin the injury which lasted six hours, he was expected to be up and about on crutches on Tuesday with a possible release from hospital the next day.

At the time of the abandonment, Arena Essex were leading 37-23, with their scorers being Lanham 7+1, Read 6+1, Pratt 9, Corbett 4, White 5, Mason 3, and Simmons 3+2.

With Lanham likely to miss the season, the Hammers camp must now look to draft in a replacement although proven options are few and far between.

On Sunday, the Hammers travelled to Newport to face the Wasps in the Premier Trophy, and drafted in Paul Pickering from Stoke as a replacement for Leigh Lanham.

However, the result did not go Arena's way, as they suffered a 51-39 defeat.

The Arena scorers were Paul Pickering (guest) 11 from 6 rides, Matt Read 9+3 from 6, Troy Pratt 0 from 3, Gary Corbett 8 from 4 , Colin White 4 from 4 , David Mason 5+3 from 6, and Nick Simmons 2 from 2.

On Friday Reading are the visitors to the Purfleet Raceway for a Premier Trophy match with tapes scheduled to rise at 8 pm.

Arena have announced that, as a goodwill measure, anybody who produces their programme from last Friday's abandoned match against Isle of Wight will be allowed a £1 reduction on tonight's admission price to the match against Reading.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.