IRISH SPEED RECORD EQUALLED!

The Driven by Wind Speed event at ‘the Ray’ in Southend continues its reputation as a record achieving event.  On Monday 10th March 2008 Timo Mullen flew down the course at 40.44 knots to equal the current Irish speed record held by John Kenny over 500m. 

Blasted by gale force winds and torrential rain, the conditions were far from ideal with several riders only managing a handful of runs.  The poor weather made it very difficult to even see the riders on the video footage essential for WSSRC ratification. According to the GPS readings taken from both Timo and John Kenny they had both come very close to breaking the current record, but only the video footage would be conclusive.  After a frustrating week of waiting the official WSSRC times were published last night showing Timo Mullen to have equalled the current Irish record.

“I knew i had gone pretty fast on Monday as i was on my Severne 4.7m Code Red which was the only size that was controllable, even Whitey was on a 5.0m, the angle was very broad so it was real balls to the wall sailing, i saw Whitey stack it on a 46.9 knot run, everything exploded!!!  GPS is pretty accurate these days but it still varies a lot from the video footage so its been a pretty nail biting week waiting on the results.  John Kenny made one run that day that was insane, he was flying but it turned out he didn’t enter the course as fast as he left it, so his overall 500m was slightly slower than mine that day even though his peak was way higher.  It makes for a pretty exciting finale to the Driven by Wind event as both myself and John now battle it out to raise the Irish record even higher!  We are both improving with every run we make and i am convinced that given the right conditions the record will be broken again very soon!”