Club racing on Saturday was held from Tarwin Lower racing out and back on the Walkerville road with the turn around atop the hill near the intersection to the Walkerville South Road. There were 22 starters in the main race and 4 starters in the Junior B race. The main race saw 5 bunches with the virtual scratch bunch giving a start of 11 minutes to the limit riders.

The limit riders (14min)Ken Barnes, Rick Whitehouse and Lindsay Love made the most of the tail wind outward run to reach the turn ahead of the chasing 11minute bunch. This bunch of older riders and juniors lost the strong work of Tom Dudley when he had to stop for minor mechanical troubles on the outward run. The 7 minute trio of Kerry Pritchard, Kevin Feely and Steve Piasente were pleased to pick up Tom and they had closed down to around 1minute behind the 11 minute bunch at the turn.

With the out and back run riders get to see how close the chasing bunches are as they commence the return run and the leaders would have seen that the powerful 5 minute bunch had also closed down the time gaps and looked ominous. The chasing (3 min) scratch bunch of 5 riders were struggling to close the gap and were under pressure to hold the bunch in front.

On the return run the two remaining limit riders, Ken and Rick, were still in front with over 1km of lead with about 4km of flat road remaining, even if it was into a head wind. However, behind there was now a bunch of 14 riders starting to power home with Ron Purtell, Gavin Slavin, Clem Fries, Tony Clark and Tom Debenham all from the 5 minute bunch driving the tempo. This allowed the power sprinter Steve Piasente to recover after his struggle up the hill to the turn. The dash to the line saw the judges faced with a wall of riders.

The flat sprint saw Steve Piasente claim another win narrowly from Gavin Slavin. Next home was Ron Purtell, then Tom Debenham, and Clem Fries. Limit rider Rick Whitehouse finished strongly to claim 6th, Kevin Feely 7th, Morgan Clark 8th, Kerry Pritcard 9th and Tom Dudley rounding out the top 10. Shortly after the main bunch the scratch bunch was lead home by Eamon Feely for the fastest time.

In the junior B scratch race over 16km it also came down to a bunch sprint. Once again, Mitch Gin triumphed. Thomas McFarlane claimed 2nd, Jarrad Donohue 3rd and Matt Dudley 4th.

Race report by Lindsay Love

Images by Kerry Pritchard