Well!!  All I can say is that I didn’t know that there were two 4.30’s in the day!

Despite this, a small group of us, including Meg, arrived to catch a minibus, driven by Mandy and assisted by Simon (the GPS)!

Funnily enough, we arrived outside Olympia at about 6.30am and had to wait for the car park to open.

A café was then required, as Mr Baker hadn’t eaten for at least 2 hours. 

The Senior Semi Final was first in the ring, and Ian & Meg were had drawn to run first.  Dawn discovered that the doors to Olympia open at 9.30, and guess when the first dog was due to run?

A big thank you has to go to Dawn, for her many phone calls during the previous week.  As you can guess, we weren’t too happy to find that it was likely that we were going to miss Ian’s run.  So especially for Barkaway, the stewards opened the doors at 9.15!

Ian ran a blistering clear round, and set the target at 35.35 seconds.  Funnily enough, there is mention on Agility Net of a group of people shouting and waving a banner!

He ended the morning in 12th place, and while he didn’t qualify for the finals in the evening, he and Meg did Qualify for the Speed Knockout. 

This involved 2 dogs running the same course alongside each other, with the winner going through to the next round.

Ian & Meg won all their rounds, cheered on ably by the crowds that were now starting to gather (and you couldn’t really hear us anymore).

Ian then ran against Greg Derrett and beat him by 0.03 of a second.  At this point, we went wild, as we thought he had won. 
Then from no-where, Lorna Peachey appeared.  Ian & Meg had just finished a run, and were expected to run again straight away. 

Poor Meg was absolutely exhausted, and combined with a late command and a spin, came second.
Meg & Ian left the ring to thunderous applause from all at Barkaway, and then had a well deserved pint.

The rest of us then spent a few hours shopping (no-one bought pink dog collars), and returned to see the excellent display by the Metropolitan Police Display team. 

It had been a long day, so we decided to leave at about 3 o’clock.  Simon & Mandy saw us home.