Club Road Race, Old Belfast Road, Ballynahinch (map)
05 May 2011
The first club road race of 2011 took place on Thursday night 5 May 2011 on the Old Belfast Road circuit in Ballynahinch. This was the 6th round of Dromara Cycling Club's league and the circuit had not been used since 2009. The weather had not been ideal all day with rain and wind but thankfully it had dried up for the start of the race.
On the night there were 5 groups of riders who had been allocated to their groups by race secretary Nigel Sudlow. The first group had only 4 riders, Colin Roy, David Young, Ted McKibbin and Peter Morgan and they got underway just after 7 pm. Group 2 started 3 minutes later and had 7 riders including 2 visitors from other clubs, Val O'Neill (Phoenix) and Peter Bohill (Maryland Wheelers). Group 3 started 1½ minutes behind Group 2 and also had 7 riders among them David Chambers competing in his first road race. Group 4 was the biggest on the night with 14 riders and they started 1½ behind Group 3. Finally after a delay of 7 minute and 15 seconds behind Group 1 it was the turn of the scratch group who had just 4 riders. In this group was Ronnie Smyth, Chris Magowan, Derek Hanna and Scott Daly from Banbridge CC.
By lap 4 Group 2 had got to the front of the race with the other groups getting closer together each lap. The weather took a turn for the worse with light rain and wind increasing. It took until lap 9 for Ronnie Smyth to get to the front with Paul Mawhirt from Group 4 close behind. Ronnie powered off the front and was the clear winner on the final lap. Paul came in second with the first close finish between Phil O'Neill and Gary Gibson ending in this order. Geoff Brown was 5th just a few seconds ahead of Chris Magowan with Derek Hanna 7th, Dan Gordon (Banbridge CC) 8th, Val O'Neill finishing strongly in 9th and Neil Currie was 10th. Off-road racer Barry Kellett finished 11th in his first road race. David Young and Colin had a close battle for the entire race with David just getting ahead of Colin on the final stretch. In the end there were 27 finishers out of the 36 who started.
Well done to all the riders.
Many thanks to the timekeepers and all the marshals. Round 7 is next Thursday (12 May 2011) and will be the first of the 16 mile time trials on the Ballynahinch to Hillsborough Road. Start in Ballynahinch. Sign on from 6:15 pm.
Timekeeper: Davy Robb, Andrew Wilson and Stephen Younge
Marshals: Philip Wilson, Roisin Boyle, Massimo Manganaro, Dennis McMullan, Cecil Conn (Phoenix), Stephen Heasley & son, Marcus Magowan, Ian Proctor, Geoffrey Magowan, Gavin Magowan.
Report & photographs: Martin Grimley
