IT will go down in the history books as the impossible Elite League Championship victory.
How could a team which was at absolute rock-bottom after seven matches - following on from a disastrous end to the previous season - somehow emerge from the pack, take on and then defeat the overwhelming favourites when the two went head to head for British speedway's biggest prize?
The echoes of 2005 are there - the miserable start, the team changes, the revival, the mad scramble of late fixtures to get into the play-offs, and finally the play-off glory.
But this was even more dramatic. In 2005 Bees' surge actually started much earlier, so much so that they finished second in the regular table, only two points behind Belle Vue - it was simply a bonus-point run-off which separated them. This time, the difference between the fourth-placed Bees and the top side over 32 matches, Poole, was a staggering 26 points.
The Pirates were the best side overall throughout the league stages - but when looking deeper, the statistics show that over Elite League B matches only, that difference was just two. It suggested that the Bees would certainly be able to give the Pirates a match in the Final - but it didn't give any indication whatsoever of the eventual 22-point aggregate winning margin.
Echoes of 2005 again: Bees travelled for the second leg with a 12 point first leg lead (five years ago it was actually 13 at Belle Vue), saw their captain disqualified from Heat 4 (Scott Nicholls in '05, Chris Harris this year) and fell eight points down on the night once again, before surging back to not only win on aggregate and on the night as well. Mathematically, the title was decided in the very same race, Heat 13, although at Kirky Lane Billy Janniro's Heat 12 second place had left the Aces all-but needing snookers.
Harris was involved as well on that famous night in Manchester. He was also a part of a Cup-winning team in 2006, the great Treble winners of 2007, and led a much-changed team to the Craven Shield in 2008. But if his name wasn't already right up there alongside the all-time legends of Coventry Speedway, one night in Dorset has ensured his place in Brandon folklore for ever.
The horrible Heat 6 crash in which Harris bounced across the Wimborne Road track before being unavoidably collected by his team-mate Lewis Bridger had the Coventry fans holding their breath. Harris's whole career could have been on the line given the impact he took, and with the ambulance on track his withdrawal from the meeting looked a certainty. What he produced over the next hour or so was - we're back to that word again - impossible.
Some time before, Bees had arrived at a dry, warm and sunny stadium knowing therefore that, unlike in the first leg, conditions would be very much in line with how the home side would be expecting them. So how do you stop a team who have demolished everyone in sight on their own patch, invariably scored mid-50s or more, and more importantly how do you stay within 12 points?
Coventry had all the answers.
Losing the toss for gate positions put some immediate pressure on, Bees left with the less favoured gates 2 and 4 for the opening race with a fired-up Poole team and crowd desperate to kick-start their challenge with a Heat 1 5-1.
That didn't happen, although it was still a reasonable start for the home side, especially after Krzysztof Kasprzak and Richard Sweetman had both made good runs to the first bend. But although Kasprzak managed to clamp off Chris Holder, Darcy Ward used the inside to good effect to treble his score from last week in one hit, whilst Holder recovered to pass Sweetman around the outside to get Poole off to a 4-2 start.
Bees' response to that was a powerful one from Przemyslaw Pawlicki in particular, the ace Polish youngster replicating Ward's move off the second bend to drive inside a surprised Leon Madsen and win well - in a time just one-hundredth of a second slower than the first race. Importantly, too, Bridger was a comfortable third over Jason Doyle, and with two races gone the Pirates had made no inroads.
That all changed, however, in Heat 3, with Poole's play-off specialist Bjarne Pedersen making the start and quickly being joined up-front by Artur Mroczka as Bridger and Ben Barker were left trailing. With Mroczka looking much more on the pace than he had done last week, it was surely a 5-1 which left the Pirates fans hopeful that they could reverse their aggregate deficit in the remaining twelve races.
The early pressure on Coventry went up a notch in Heat 4, with Pawlicki charging to the front again only to be rounded off turn four by Pirates skipper Davey Watt, whilst at the same time Harris was thrusting to get past Doyle for third. The Bees captain appeared to have got the job done into lap two, but he then drifted wide and as Doyle moved back to the inside there was slight contact and Harris was down. Not enough contact for Bees to contest the decision to exclude Harris, though - just as in Heat 1 at Brandon last week, the referee got it right.
So it was Pawlicki who went alone in the re-run, and for 99 per cent of the race it looked like being a famous win as the Bees reserve defied every effort from Watt, and he seemed certain to have the job done midway around the last bend as his opponent had got out of shape. But that actually did Watt a favour as he recovered his error by turning back sharply, found drive on the inside and snatched a dramatic win by inches.
Suddenly Bees' aggregate lead had been halved and they needed to steady the ship - and they did so in Heat 5 with Kasprzak and Sweetman again displaying lightning reactions from the start. Pedersen did split them off turn four but Sweetman held his line to keep third place ahead of Mroczka, whilst Kasprzak showed all of his Wimborne Road experience to hold the lead from Pedersen, whose late challenge off bend four was in vain.
But then came the incident that could easily have been the defining moment of the Final - with Harris making the start in Heat 6, clamping Holder to the inside but then being run into by the Poole No.1 bringing Harris down and leaving Bridger nowhere to go to avoid him. Intentional it was not from Holder, but the decision to invite all four riders back for the re-run was a hugely generous one in favour of the Pirates rider - not that Bees could concern themselves too much with that, given that they had two riders on the deck and an ambulance being called for Harris.
Bridger, who had landed heavily on his shoulder after effectively using Harris's back as a launchpad, was first to get to his feet - and when Harris, against all expectations, did so to tumultuous applause from the Coventry fans around turns one and two, a huge statement of intent was delivered by the Bees skipper. He sprinted straight back to the pits, and for the next hour adrenaline overcame pain. What he achieved ranks up there with the very, very best in the history of Coventry Speedway.
For starters, there was the small matter of the re-run of Heat 6 and a four-lap squabble with Holder which Wimborne Road regulars have described as the race of the season at the venue. The lead changed hands no fewer than six times as they passed and re-passed, and Harris once again found himself in that impossible position heading into turn three for the final time on one wheel, on the outside, and with Holder covering the inside and the lead. Harris went in wide, turned back one last time, and pipped Holder to the post. Cue delirium from the Coventry fans, as well as not a little relief that their captain was still in play.
Poole were still four points up on the night, and that became eight in Heat 7 when Watt made a flying start and was quickly joined around the outside by Madsen as Pawlicki and Barker missed out. Pawlicki began regaining ground in the last two laps, and looked quicker than Watt as he challenged on the final bends - with one more lap, things may have been different, but as it was a Poole 5-1 meant they were just four-down on aggregate with more than half of the meeting to go. It was time to step things up.
There was panic in the Pirates' pits ahead of Heat 8, a broken seat forcing Ward onto Holder's machine for a race which he would start from the outside. Pawlicki, with two on the trot, made it into the first bend first and with Ward finding plenty of pace on the borrowed bike, it took a strong defence from the Pole to hold it, particularly at the end of lap three. Pawlicki came through for a big win over the frustrated Ward, who showed his emotions back in the pits - and just as important was the third-place point for Sweetman over Doyle, which gave Bees a little breathing space with a 4-2.
More was to come in Heat 9, this time with Bridger borrowing machinery from Kasprzak and using it to achieve another useful third place ahead of Mroczka, who had failed to build on his first ride paid win. That action, though, was almost incidental to what was going on up front, because Pedersen needed eyes in the back of his head to repel the thrusting Harris, whose last bend move was totally different to what had been seen before - he pegged the inside tight around turns three and four, then moved mid-track and snatched another sensational win on the line.
The Poole 5-1 in Heat 7 had been wiped out by two 4-2s on the trot, and that left the Pirates needing to pull back eight points across the next six races. Heat 10 was to prove pivotal - and it included a massive decision by boss Alun Rossiter, not only to use Harris's rider-replacement outing in this heat rather than in Heat 14, but also to replace Barker with Pawlicki and go for the jugular, against the Holder/Ward combination which has taken so many 5-1s around Wimborne Road this season.
This time, to the horror of the home fans, it was their riders facing the 5-1 as Harris made a lightning getaway and was joined by the inspired Pawlicki, who first moved inside Ward off the second bend and then, after Holder had looked to be moving into second place, held a superb inside line to end the first lap in second place. Displaying maturity beyond his years on only his second appearance at the track, Pawlicki held second place, Harris held the lead, and the Bees had got the match back to level on the night - and the Pirates' resistance was broken.
Watt continued to do his best to lead from the front, strongly moving inside Kasprzak on the first two turns of Heat 11 - but when he looked around it was bad news: Sweetman had again ridden maturely to hold his third place over Madsen, and it was another race gone, another race nearer glory for the Bees.
It could have been completed in Heat 12, with Madsen back in to replace Mroczka, and Bees needing a 4-2 to start the celebrations. The 4-2, in fact went to Poole, thanks to a fine ride by Doyle to make it all the way around the outside during the course of the first lap, with Pawlicki at times trapped between the two Pirates riders but holding Madsen off for second, which left the home side needing nothing less than three 5-1s to win - or two 5-1s and a 4-2 for the ultimate shootout of golden heats.
The tension was only one race away from ending, though. Harris and Kasprzak, the Elite League Pairs Champions, have become a truly fearsome combination over recent weeks, and if ever there was a time for them to make gates one and three work to perfection, it was in Heat 13. With just a lap of the race completed, the Bees fans knew it was countdown time. There was no way their men were going to be overtaken, it was simply a matter of counting down the laps. As they crossed the line, there was an explosion of joy, a release of tension, and the Buildbase Bees really had completed the impossible.
Formalities, of course, still had to be concluded - the 15 heats of the meeting had to be finished, and just in case anyone thought that winning the title would lessen Coventry's focus, they were wrong. Because the Bees had said they were going to Wimborne Road to win - to win on the night. And they did just that.
Pawlicki put the seal on a glittering individual performance with another awesome Heat 14 ride, being outgated but switching inside everyone to hit the front off turn two, and Barker joined the party himself by outdoing Madsen for second place as even Pedersen was relegated to the back.
That made sure of victory on the night but the Bees still weren't finished, Kasprzak making a flying start to Heat 15 only to be pulled back for what had looked like a perfect getaway - but it was a repeat performance in the re-run, the Pole hitting the front with Harris again showing total commitment to surge between Holder and Pedersen on the back straight. An interesting footnote to proceedings was that every member of the Poole side, on their home track, suffered at least one last place - and Bees won nine races.
Three straight 5-1s at the end gave Coventry a 50-40 win on the night, a result nobody could argue with after two legs which prove again that the trophies are never signed and sealed until the Final. No matter how good you are in April, you have to carry it through to the end - and the sole consolation for the understandably devastated home club was the undoubted commercial success that the play-offs are.
The sportsmanship of Neil Middleditch, Davey Watt and the Pirates riders was appreciated at the end of a night in which the Bees had generated their own fireworks, heroes had been crowned champions, and boss Alun Rossiter had banished the memories of his play-off defeats with Swindon. For Avtar Sandhu and Colin Pratt, a third Elite League title with the Buildbase Bees, and every bit as special as the previous two.
As for the riders - Chris Harris, Krzysztof Kasprzak, Edward Kennett, Ben Barker, Richard Sweetman, Lewis Bridger, Przemyslaw Pawlicki, Josh Auty and Aaron Summers deserve every single plaudit which comes their way... the celebrations are only just beginning.
