Club Races
Monaghan is Back (...
a bunch next week!)
Rifle Butts Short Course, Horsham,
Sunday 26th October 2008
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Danny
Monaghan |
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A tail wind start meant high speeds
as Grampians Vets cyclists tackled the 46km Rifle Butts
course last Sunday, starting and finishing from the
Wool Factory on Golf Course Road, Horsham.
The first warm conditions for
this summer racing period, with 25 degrees
at 8am, along with a moderate head wind on the final
leg back to Horsham, made conditions a little testing.
Meg Parnaby
led the field away, riding from 14 and a half minutes.
Having raced the 70km Camperdown to Warrnambool the
day before, Meg did well to hold off the 6 and a half
minute riders Peter Mayo, Tom Eldridge, Danny Monaghan
and Sean Prins until the 30km mark.
These riders then
worked well together to hold off the following bunches
until the final kilometre of the race.
Riding off 2
minutes, second scratch riders Steve Monks, Peter Parnaby,
Harvey Lang and Gerard O’Brien combined well
to hold the scratch riders Tim Schneider, Alan Barnett,
Chris Scott, Frank Kean and Drew Heard at bay until
35km into the race, when these two bunches combined.
This
combined bunch then worked hard into the wind on the
long leg back to Horsham, finally catching
the tail end of the straggly lead bunch with about
1km to go.
However, Monaghan and Mayo had escaped
from the rest of the lead group of riders just before
the scratch riders caught up, and managed to power
home ahead of the rest of the field with Monaghan crossing
the line first ahead of Mayo.
Monks was third with
Chris Scott recording the fastest time of the day of
1 hour 14 minutes.
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