The Club road season main fixture events concluded on Sunday morning with the running of the McIndoe Cup around the Pound Creek circuit. It was a pretty good morning for racing with the temperature around 12C and a cool northerly blowing. Several of our junior club members needed the racing as they will be in action next weekend at Bendigo in the National Road titles.
The senior races were run as scratch races with just 6 riders competing for the trophy whilst there were 5 starters in the B grade race. Both groups started together which proved a bonus for Brad Bouquet who was a B grade rider but managed to go with the A grade field on the climb on the first lap. The A grade field kept a solid pace up on the various climbs on the first lap before Austin Timmins and Steve Allen split the field on the second lap to ride clear and go on to have a 2 up sprint at the end. In the dash to the line Austin grabbed the honours in a narrow win and almost 2minutes up on the chasers. Oliver McLean who would normally have managed to go over the hills had bike trouble and lost time with a dropped chain – he will need a better bike mechanic before next weekend at Bendigo. Third went to Chris Rowe just ahead of Leigh Stott then Oliver and Kevin Feely.
In the B Grade race, Brad managed to go with the A graders right to the finish to have an easy win. Chasing behind it was a harder ride but Caulfield-Carnegie rider, David Wereszczuk had good legs to take the second place ahead of Tony Giles, Mark Bensley and Damien King.
The C grade field of junior riders raced a 20km handicap around part of the circuit. The scratch rider was Josh Werzsczuk, with Tom Fitzgerald on 1min, Kaleb Jans 2 min, Zach Stubbs-Teylor 3 min and Jack Allen on 4 min. After 5km Zach had caught Jack whilst Tom had caught Kaleb with Josh closing in as well. With 6km remaining, Zach was still moving well and had a lead of over 2 min when they turned into Pound Creek Road with around 6km down hill to the finish. Zach was not letting go of this victory and steamed home a clear winner. Tom Fitzgerald had the better with Josh in the battle for the minor places whilst Jack managed to stay clear of Kaleb with those riders finishing 4th and 5th respectively.
The Club have some Sunday training rides scheduled for the next few Sundays prior to a special sponsored race on Sept 24 at Poowong. Riders can keep training and hopefully enjoy the fruits of their training in what is sure to be a well contested race day. Further out the track season is due to start on Friday Oct 28. The Club wish Austin, Oliver and Thomas the best of luck at Bendigo next weekend.
Lindsay
updated 9am 25th Sept.
