Fortunately for riders lining up at the Club Road Champs last Sunday, the forecasters got it wrong and we ended up enjoying excellent Autumn conditions for racing on the 5km Camelot Course. By the 9.30am the sun was out, with the temperature at 15 degrees and a westerly breeze blowing across the course that wasn’t strong enough to dominate proceedings and have a strong bearing on the outcome.

This was the first time the Club had raced on the King Arthur & Greendale Drives 'there and back' course and it proved to be a much tougher proposition than the 3km Belgie Loop Circuit through the gravel, we had previously raced over the Summer Series.  The Greendale rollers had to be negotiated twice each lap and combined with the false flat on King Arthur Drive, it gave the course an attention grabbing total climb figure of 45 metres each lap.

This meant that D grade's 4 laps totalled 180 metres of climbing, C grade had to deal with 315 metres over
their 7 laps & A/B grade a leg sapping 450 metres of climbing over their 10 lap (50km) ride.  To put this in perspective, a ride from the Coast up into the first two Reikorangi fingers is around 450 metres of climbing, so it proved to be a tough mornings work for all riders and a genuine test of overall biking fitness, befitting a Club Championship Event.

C Grade Race Report
(Courtesy of Tony Levaggi)

After a summer of trying and mostly failing to drop each other in C grade, here we were again with a challenging new course, a stern breeze to mix things up and some fresh faces to keep us on our toes.

The first lap started with a bit of a mishap for Mikayla, a junior rider, coming off at the first turn round the cones. Fortunately unhurt, she was able to get back on and rejoin the bunch.  Things settled down after that as the wind and the surprisingly tough little ramps made it difficult to get away from the pack. At different times most of the field attempted to use one of the climbs to stretch the field, but without much success.

Dave Chandler had a decent go after 4 laps, with a surge away from the turnaround. The weird nature of the wind always gave the bunch the advantage though, with the tail wind down King Arthur drive turning into a headwind before the right hander.  With two laps to go I repeated Dave's attack but was also reeled in before the corner.  From there it was only going to end in a sprint. I unwisely held the front after being caught, hoping someone would counter-attack so I could join them. Instead, of course, just serving as the lead out man for the sprint.

Johnny Holten showed the same turn of speed he's often shown during the summer and took the win from the junior rider Bertie McGuigan, with Andy Ross impressively completing the podium in his first race since having Covid.  Extra kudos also to Mike Harding for the extended warm up (and warm down) by riding to the
race from Whitby.

A/B Grade Race Report
(Courtesy of Gary Clareburt)

A grade riders are a bit thin on the ground at the Club at the moment, so Tom Gollins & Katie Richards, the two A graders who lined up on Sunday, started with B grade. We haven’t seen Tom at a club event all Summer, so Sundays cameo was his first appearance since his victory at last years Road Champs.  I’m not sure what he’s been up to in the interim, but it’s obviously involved a lot of hard work, as worryingly for the rest of the field, he lined up looking leaner & fitter than last year.

Right from the off, the surges Tom put in made things ‘uncomfortable’ for the rest of the bunch, who were left scrambling for a wheel to try and stay in touch.  On lap two he really began to get into his work and preceded to give us a proper old fashioned work over, to the point that when we hit over 60k coming off the back Greendale roller, self preservation kicked in and the rest of the field backed off before we all imploded.

As the race progressed Tom continued to ride strongly, with an impressive solo average speed for the 50k of just under 39 km/h, enabling him to comfortably take out the win and retain the Men's Road Race Trophy.
No doubt due to the torrid start to the race, the main bunch riding in Tom's wake lost Mark Coburn (a visitor from Wellington) early on lap three.  The remaining riders then settled into a solid pace averaging 36.5 km/h for the 50 k ride, with most riders taking a turn up front to share the load.

It was about lap seven that Katie Richards decided to hurry things along and just to make sure we were all paying attention, lifted the pace and put a couple of impressive pulls in up front.  This had the effect putting sprinting specialist and Summer Series Winner Dwight Garton under the pump and after hanging in there under pressure for a good part of the race, Dwight finally parted company with the bunch with just over two laps to ride.  To be fair, with all the out of the saddle efforts over the rollers and covering the surges, most of
us felt on the limit going into the final laps.

So on to the final lap and it was shaping up as coming down to a bunch sprint in the finishing straight.  However, at the foot of the final climb in Greendale Drive, with still over 1 km to go, the youngest rider in the bunch, Ewen Mason had other ideas and throwing caution to the wind, he took off, getting away to a nice break. 

The chase was on!

Led by Katie, we all jumped out of the saddle and got down to the business of reeling Ewen in.  But, no doubt aided by his new Pinarello, Ewen rode a blinder and held on brilliantly to take out the B grade win, closely followed by Katie (1st women & 2nd A Grade) then Richard Graham & Rhys Evans (2nd & 3rd B Grade).
Ewen has shown a lot of promise in the past, winning C grade and taking out the overall 2021 Summer Series. He had moved up to B grade for 2022 and while riding well had been hampered by reliability problems with his old bike, which effected his results. So it was great to see it all come together for Ewen on Sunday and confirm his potential as a rider.  Chapeau Ewen!

D Grade Race Report

D grade, being the first riders away on Sunday, were the guinea pigs on the untried Camelot 5km course, so it was with great interest Darrel Flaws and Mike Burrows headed off on their 4 lap, 20km race.  It was encouraging for the watching riders starting after them, to see these two guys going about their business on the new course without any apparent difficulty.  Darrel and Mike had turn about taking the lead on lap one and then on lap two Mike got to the front and was never headed, taking out a comfortable race win.
 

Volunteers

As always, none of the clubs events would happen without the work of the support crews, so a big thank you to...
Course Set Up: Darrel Flaws, Jonathan Neal & Gary Clareburt
Race Manager: Paul Rawlinson
Assistant Race Manager: Jo Warren
Marshalls: John Valentine, Greg Overton & Chris Ball

Article added: Tuesday 24 May 2022