IT was a long way to go and watch the rain come down, but that's all sidecar world champions Steve Webster and Paul Woodhead did this weekend.

After flying out all the way to Australia to race in round 2 of the 2001 FIM Sidecar World Cup at Philip Island, near Melbourne, the race had to be abandoned well before it even started.

A torrential rainstorm of almost Biblical proportions flooded the track, making it impossible for the proceedings to continue.

A long way for nothing? Yes and a qualified no; in a way some good fortune may have been salvaged albeit through - literally - convoluted circumstances.

The drama of the weekend was a knee injury to Woodhead that necessitated a whirlwind 200kilometres round trip and overnight stop in a private clinic on Friday to get a damaged cartilage removed.

While the race doctors had declared Woodhead fit enough to race on Saturday, he was understandably sore after the operation and most certainly would have not been up to the usual muscular acrobatics so required of a sidecar passenger.

In a dry race, a win would have been out of the question.

Points leader Klaus Klaffenbock could probably have got at least a rostrum placing, and increased his championship lead while Webster motored around trying to pick up points. With the race cancelled and no points awarded, it's as-you-were, and 'Klaffy' doesn't get a gift-wrapped opportunity to increase his lead.

The strapped-up Woodhead revealed the drama.

"We started practice okay on Friday before it started raining but somehow I twisted the cartilage in my knee," he said.

"I took some painkillers to go out in the last session, but after speaking to the track doctor, I realised I needed a proper fix and went to a clinic where they took out the damaged cartilage by keyhole surgery.

"I got back to the track on Saturday morning but by now it was raining hard.

"Steve decided there was no point in going out to practice in the rain - we couldn't risk further damage to my knee and we couldn't have gone faster anyway. We were fourth fastest so we decided to wait and just go out in the Superpole."

Easing the machine around gingerly in the increasingly appalling conditions and trying to keep as smooth as possible for his passenger, Webster brought home a time giving them sixth place on the grid.

Declared Webster: "Although we qualified reasonably well under the circumstances, Paul would have definitely had problems in a dry race.

"He wouldn't have been able to move around as much and that would have prevented us from going flat out.

"We would have had to make the best of it; a wet race would have suited us as the pace would have been slower, so Paul wouldn't have had so much to do."

But the weather made it impossible to race anyway.

Only the first leg of the World Superbikes was run, and that was in storm conditions. With the organisers postponing the second leg after a retaining wall collapsed on the Gardner straight it soon became apparent there was going to be no more racing, and so the sidecar were also cancelled.

The next race is in Monza in Italy in three weeks by which time Woodhead's knee will have been given a proper chance to fully heal.

Updated: 12:50 Monday, April 23, 2001