Operators Club Final 2018
Volvo Construction Equipment was this year celebrating 20 years since the Club was started in Germany in 2008. Once again, Europe’s finest operators competed in a battle of speed, precision and technique in the Operators Club Final.
Ryan Sadler and James Covell topped the leaderboard at the GB Operators Club heats at Hillhead this year and so qualified to represent GB in the international finals. They would be competing against 32 finalists from 15 countries at the Volvo factory in Konz, Germany.
ROUND 1 The competition began at 8.30am with the ‘Chain Ball’ challenge. Participants had to guide a ball attached to the bucket of an
ECR355E with a chain through an obstacle and then balance the ball on top of a pipe before knocking down only black wooden batons, balancing the ball back onto the pipe and then returning to the start position.
The competitors selected their start positions at random on the Friday evening, and Ryan was fifth to compete. He completed the course in 105.63 seconds but knocked over a yellow baton adding a 10-second penalty to his time making it 115.63 seconds in total. James was up for twelfth position start and completed the course in a time of 107.75. After the first round, James finished in twelfth overall position with Ryan coming in sixteenth.
ROUND 2 The next challenge with the title of the ‘Artic Slalom’ began, and it was a nervous wait for Ryan and James, neither of whom had driven
this machine before. An A30G had to be driven around a slalom course and then reversed down a track, into a ‘garage’ before driving over the finish line.
Several tennis balls on poles were scattered along the route and time penalties were picked up for any that fell. The competitors who first tried the course showed that this was not going to be easy, as several barriers and fences will testify! Ryan managed to stay on the track and not hit any barriers but did have to reverse part way through the slalom. He completed the task with no mistakes until the very end when some harsh braking saw him lose the tennis ball attached to a cone on the hood of the machine; this added a 30-second penalty to his overall time.
James performed really well in this challenge and completed the course cleanly and in good time but unfortunately fell into the same trap as Ryan and some hard braking at the end added 30 seconds to his overall time.
ROUND 3 After a short break for lunch, the finalists were given a really tricky challenge called ‘The Grapevine’. Using a digging grab, the finalists
had to pick up poles decorated with grapevines and move them into corresponding pipes.
Those at the top of the leaderboard went first, and some of those in the top ten went crashing out in either disqualification (2016 winner Ermes Gomez was disqualified for not passing through the timing gate) or maxed out on time, proving this was not going to be easy. Ryan tried this challenge first, and while he finished without picking up time penalties, he reached the maximum time of 4 minutes and with that, was out of the competition.
With a few of the top 10 crashing out, James had a chance to make it to the final if he performed well. He completed the course cleanly in a time of 178 seconds, and it was a tense wait to see if he had made it into the top 10 and would progress into the final.
THE FINAL The final challenge saw the return of the ‘Labyrinth’ challenge from 2015. All the finalists gathered to hear who would be taking
part and sadly James’s name wasn’t called out. He had just missed out and had placed thirteenth overall. Ryan finished in eighteenth place.
The Labyrinth was a closely fought competition, but there could only be one winner. This year the winners were Bendt Risom (Denmark) finishing in third place, Teemu Grén (Finland) finishing in second and 2016 winner Othmar Pletzer (Austria) took first place on the podium once again.
Well done to Ryan and James who both performed exceptionally well in a very tough competition. As Lewis Jarman and Phil Port placed third and fourth at Hillhead 2018, they will be taking part in the 2019 Operators Club Final next year.
Amy Metcalfe THE VOICE MAGAZINE No 34 2018 43
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