Dean Barker turned the speedway world upset down at Arlington Stadium yesterday when he won his own testimonial meeting.

The comeback kid of the track beat a high-class field to make off with the £1,000 winner-takes-all prize.

It was a fairy-tale result for the Eastbourne Eagles star who cheated death in a horror pile-up earlier in his career and has suffered a catalogue of serious injuries.

Barker was already assured of a bumper pay-day from a big crowd who turned out to pay tribute to one of the club's most popular riders, but few would have predicted the outcome on the track.

Barker was never headed, the only time he failed to win in six efforts coming in the first race of the afternoon when his bike packed up while he was in the lead.

His charge to victory began with a win over British champ-ion Scott Nicholls, then David Norris and finally a from-the-back win over Joe Screen.

The rest was more or less plain sailing, with Barker leading from the gate in both his semi-final and the final.

Barker apart, the revelation was former team-mate Martin Dugard, who quit the sport two seasons ago and these days reappears only on occas-ions like this.

Dugard looked every bit still the master of Arlington, top-ping the semi-final qualifiers with ten points with Austra-lian champion Leigh Adams and ultimately chasing home Barker in the final.

Adams, who had looked the likely winner for much of the meeting, had to settle for third place ahead of another Grand Prix ace, Lee Richardson.

First Norris and Screen, then Nicholls and former world champion Mark Loram, who had posted the fastest time of the day in 56.6sec., had their hopes dashed in the semi-finals.

Among the fancied runners who did not get that far were Paul Hurry and Americans Billy Janniro and Ryan Fisher.

Adams and Dugard were the only riders in the 16-strong line-up to win their first two races, Adams the only one with a 100 per cent record after three.

In the end, however, not even he could spoil Barker's party.

Scorers: Leigh Adams 10, Mar-tin Dugard 10, Dean Barker 9, Joe Screen 8, David Norris 8, Scott Nicholls 7, Mark Loram 7, Lee Richardson 6, Billy Janniro 6, Adam Shields 6, Ryan Fisher 5, Paul Hurry 4, Shane Parker 3, Leigh Lanham 3, Peter Ljung 2, Danny Bird 1.

First semi-final: Richardson, Adams, Norris, Screen.

Second semi-final: Barker, Dugard, Nicholls, Loram.

Final: Barker, Dugard, Adams, Richardson.