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Mildura-Coomealla Cycling Club
Gol Gol circuit, March 2, 2003
Dion Dashes Away to Win. Kev Tankard Keeps His Rivals Tethered
By Peter Winton
Curlwaa's best known cyclist, Dion Basse-Anstee, scored a significant cycling win in his short time in the sport in Sunday's event. The 16 year old proving he his speed at the end of a hotly contested graded scratch amongst riders many years his senior. For those of you wondering where Curlwaa is, it is a little irrigation settlement near Wentworth, NSW, on the Murray River. Now, you won't find any coffee shops there, matter of fact there's no shops to find, just grapes and oranges!
Dion was able to keep up with the attacks and break-aways launched by the older (more mature) B grade riders. Is this a sign of worse to come? He surely is destined for a B grade winter series.
Kev Tankard and his cohorts in A grade, including Rob McNally, Ian Beruldsen and Harvey Dwyer (for this week at least) held their own little event, being small in numbers, and the status quo remains with Kevin showing his challengers a very clean pair of cleats in the uphill sprint along Wood Street.
My apologies to the A grade stalwarts, not being able to soak up any of the goings on in your bunch makes my notes predominantly "B" grade influenced. We'll all get to share the "cannondale" feeling in a few weeks no doubt!
A few quotable quotes first: Arthur Anderson maintains the only fast twitch fibre in his body is his anal sphincter. Any body care to check it out? He reckons it was working at a rate of knots today. Good ol' Arturo, he did his best to carve us up with his powerful lunges from the lantern rouge position several times. Unfortunately, the 'chewing gum' riders were very sticky today (another of his sayings).
Richard Hale had a beauty, well it wasn't today but yesterday on the 100km training ride. Richard was out the front doing his 1 km turn when riders asked him to "get up the road" so they could utilise his draft. Poor Richard (a west ozzie by the way), he thought that meant go further ahead ! "Why didn't you say move over you *&^%$# blokes". Suffice to say he's learning. Guess it must be a mining engineers trait?
All eyes in the killer "bees" were on Brendan Liddle as the battle for B grade supremacy is sizzling. He actually was found on the front for a considerable time in the early parts of today's fun and games whilst blokes like me used that all up with glee. It didn't work, again!
Jack Lokan found some good form by launching into a couple of attacks, along with Barry Pollock to keep the riders out of breath and perspiring. Nathan Welsh made a welcome presence and produced an outstanding effort. Average speed on my ticker for the 48 klicks was 35.7km/h.
Next Tuesday is a 24km TT at Riverside.
Results, 48km graded scratch
A grade placings 1 K Tankard 1.15.50.47 2 R McNally 0.00.33 3 I Beruldsen 4 H Dwyer B Grade 1 D Basse-Anstee 1.17.47.99 2 N Welsh 0.00.63 3 J Lokan 4 B Liddle 5 P Winton 6 A Anderson 7 R Hale 8 B Pollock 9 L Jordan Times recorded by our fancy electronic print-out timer.
