Saturday 8th October saw nine youth cycling clubs competing in the South East Regional Go-Ride Racing Club Team final hosted at Cyclopark. We took a great team of mixed ages and experience : Matilda, Jess, Ingrid, Lili, Luke, Aidan, Scott, Ewan, Luke, Jacob and Eddy.
The format was 4 races :
Individual Time Trial over a technical grass, trail and road circuit.
Skills Challenge Team Relay
Mass start race over the same technical circuit as the individual time trial
Sprint elimination races over a short technical circuit.
The weather added uncertainty to the event with heavy rain showers making an already technical circuit even more challenging. Our riders performed fantastically in all the events but even more impressive were the skills shown on the off-road sections. Particularly so given well over half of our team have never competed in an off-road race. It certainly was very different to our Preston Park track !
Some brilliant individual performances from Aidan, Jess, Luke and Ingrid but there were solid performances from all the team riders in all the events. As well as giving it everything in all the races all the riders and parents really enjoyed an exciting afternoons racing.
When it came to the prize giving Aidan won by a margin the Gold in the intermediate mass start race. Jess won Gold in a very tightly fought intermediate sprint elimination races and Luke won Silver in the advanced mass start and sprint elimination races against much older riders. Fantastic results and congratulations !
Next came the awarding of the overall Team prize. They announced the club positions in reverse orders …. 9th, 8th, 7th …. Could we be 5th or 4th?? … the tension mounted …. in 3rd place VC Jubilee, wow ! …. and in 2nd place team Darenth…. Yes we’d won, 1st place !!! followed by much cheering and celebration as the riders were awarded their hard earned trophy.
Kristin, Simon and myself were all present as coaches and it was an absolute pleasure to watch our riders perform so well after the hard work and improvement shown throughout the year. Securing the overall win really was a great team effort both in the races and in the way all the riders supported each other all afternoon.
Congratulations to all the rider and parents for their support. A big thanks also to all the coaches who have worked so hard all year to develop the skills of the riders.