Event report by Toby & Peter

Wow!  What a fantastic day!  One of those days were everything seemed to come together just right.

Before we get into the write up we owe our thanks to the volunteers on the day who made it possible for the race to happen.  So thanks to the following people who stepped up to give us a hand on the day – Alana and Chris for registration desk duties; Mike, Meg, Rob, Shaw and Dave who were all on traffic control duties ; Brendan for general organisation and help; and everyone else who came early & stayed late for set up and pick up duties.  Thanks a lot team.

So the day started just before 7am for the organisers who were on sight to begin set up at 7am.  After a quick chat with RCCC boys we decided where everything needed to be and got into putting up tents, setting up desks, organising drinks, cameras etc.

At about 7:50am all the traffic controllers had been briefed and where in position armed with 2-way radios and ready to roll.

Alana and Chris had an interesting license filing system sorted out with Alana filing by surname and Chris filing by first name.  It all worked out. 

 So 8:00am and D grade was called to the line.  We had around a dozen starters in D grade.  A good mix of ages and abilities.  D grade was put on for people who hadn’t raced before but were keen to give it a try, and for any juniors that wanted to mix it up.  We were extemely happy to have Gary Suckling, a qualified coach, step up and ride with the guys.  It was fantastic to hear him offering advice on ride lines etc as the group raced around the track.  Shaw took the win ahead of Shao and Keiran.

C grade was next with a huge number of riders.  SPR had a good showing in C grade and we were pretty confident that the Green Team would be able to pull off a result.  Some big names were lurking in the pack – Zac, Mark H, Jen along with some first time crit racers including Nathan, Rob and Jamie.  Josh Clarke from ECU managed to roll Jen with his huge sprint in the finish and Daniel Foo came through for third.

B grade took the course with a massive field too.  I was racing in B grade too – but with my mind more on the days organisation I didnt realy give myself time to get warmed up and get serious.  I nearly forgot to nominate actually. Anwyay, the race got under way as we rolled out for the first lap.  We came around for the finish of the first race only to be stopped at the start line for some reason.  Turns out there was a truck on the course and the traffic marshalls had sprung into action and alerted everyone on course.  Brilliant job guys.  We stopped on the line for about 30 seconds until the race was given the green light to go ahead.  A few laps later i misjudged a corner and and finished my race.  Will let the other guys in B finish the race report.  Aaron Lee took the win ahead of Theo Yates who is on the comeback from a couple of weeks off the bike, and young Ben Wibberely is finding some form after a crappy winter of illness – he took a solid third in the end.

A grade had a good turn out with some pretty serious hitters lining up to take on the Tech Park course.  Sam Davis, Glenn Harris, Bradley Linfield, Sam Smith and our one and only SPR A grade contender Julian Jacobs – back from the dessert and looking to regain his form from last years crit season.  The heat was on in A grade both figuratively and literally, reducing the large field down to only 8 hardened finishers.  It came down to Harris, Davis and the young Linfield in to last couple of laps with the world champ Glenn Harris proving too strong on the day.  Well deserved win for him – and a very respectable 5th place for Julian.

We will be doing a couple of things differently for the next event which is on the 12th of December. 

Firstly, we will be having D & C grade presentations after the C grade finish.  We all want people to stay around for the presentations at the end, but we realise this isnt realistic so we will do two presentations next time.

Secondly, we will be spliting the rego and refreshment desks to make that job a bit easier.  It gets crazy hectic when everyone finishes their race and then goes straight to the desk to hand back their number and get a drink at the same time.

There will some other changes too, but nothing drastic as overall the day went extremely well.  If there are any other things you would like to see changed let us know and we will see what we can do.

Here are some photos from the day from Tony Lendrum.