Club Races
Elliott Blasts Past Opposition
Stawell Racecourse Handicap
Sunday 6th June 2010

	Daryl Elliott

Horsham cyclist Daryl Elliott clinched victory right on the line to take out the Grampians Vets gruelling 55km Stawell Racecourse handicap last Sunday.

Elliott, along with Crystal Wemyss, were the powerhouse of the 7 minute bunch, with the slightly out of form Peter Parnaby and Tony Lloyd providing solid support.

At the Pomonal turn, they had caught up to the 10 minute riders, Meg Parnaby, Damian Rabl and Tony Rathgeber, who had found the strong southerly wind difficult to counter. These bunches combined and headed back to Lake Fyans, dodging a stray emu in the process, then across to Mokepilly, where they managed to overshoot the U turn and lost a good 20 seconds regrouping.

The journey back towards Lake Fyans and the Stawell Pomonal road was straight into the wind, and tested the riders to the full, with not all surviving.

At this point the 3 and a half minute riders Gerard O'Brien, Alan Barnett, Drew Heard and Dean Hayward were still about two minutes behind, with the scratch riders Danny Monaghan, Shane Clark, Peter Wemyss and Sean Prins slowly closing in on them.

Once onto the Pomonal road heading back to Stawell, the wind was from the side, and speeds lifted. At this point Crystal Wemyss was setting the pace for the 7 minute riders, until about 10 kilometres to go, when her cold suddenly caught up with her and she was forced to slow down, leaving Elliott, Lloyd and Peter Parnaby to continue the charge.

The 3 minute riders were still about half a kilometre behind, but were running out of puff, while at about this point the scratch riders split in two as well, ending their chances.

Rounding the final bend with a 200m sprint to go, Lloyd was leading, but Peter Parnaby made a bid for the line and almost made it, but could not hold off the powerful finish of Elliott, who hit the line first to win by a wheel.

Danny Monaghan took out fastest time of 1 hour, 28 minutes.