Road and MTB racers in last-chance saloon

AHEAD of this week's confirmation of Island Games cycling squads the Guernsey Velo Club staged its first road race on the Games course, a mountain bike race at Le Guet and a 10-mile time trial. With the road race and mountain-bike meeting clashing most riders had to make a choice of competition.

First away were the road racers on the familiar L'Eree circuit although the start and finish was at St Peter's instead of the Pleinmont lay-by.

Twelve riders set out to complete the Games distance of nine laps and of these nine finished.

During the first six laps little happened except for some attempted breaks by Danny Guillemette, but these were soon nullified and into the seventh lap there was a familiar attack by Paul Brehaut, Terry Wright and Aaron Bailey that soon saw them open a lead on the chasing bunch.

Brehaut continued to show his strength by getting away from Wright and Bailey to win in 3-06.30 with Wright following 36sec. behind and Bailey at a further 36sec.

Marcus Elliott won the sprint for fourth place but it was notable that Ann Bowditch was also in this sprint and this was well beyond her required Games distance.

Of the four riders to start the second-category race of seven laps Colin Ozanne was unfortunate to puncture and Lars Persson outsprinted Bob Green and Lyn Coombs to take the honours.

On the penultimate lap of the third-category race (four laps), Keith Brown and Aidan Stanford got away from the rest of the riders, but Brown gave Stanford the slip on the climb to Torteval and held the gap throughout the fourth lap to win by 47sec.

Stanford was brave enough to start the mountain bike race later on but after two-and-a-half laps the legs had had enough.

The Games selectors were still keen to see how some of the mountain bike squad riders were performing and had therefore arranged an extra race at Le Guet.

However, unlike Herm where the lap time is in the region of 20 minutes the Le Guet circuit was only seven minutes for the fastest riders.

The potential Games squad was set a race time of approximately an hour and 45 minutes with all other riders using the course as a training ride and pulling out as they pleased.

The course sapped the riders' strength with the combination of pine needles and the uphill drags.

After eleven minutes of racing Rob Smart, Tom Sherwill, Chris Le Page and Nick Mann had already pulled away from the other riders.

Young Sherwill again had a great ride but unfortunately due to cycling age regulations, he is not old enough to take part in the Guernsey Games. Smart had shrugged off the back problems that had caused him to retire in Herm, but this time it was Le Page who had to retire with breathing difficulties after just over seven laps.

Danny Shaw was making his second comeback ride following a long period of injury and should be back to his old form with a couple more rides.

Smart lapped all the riders other than Sherwill and Mann to complete 14 and a half laps in 1-42.18, just over a minute in front of Sherwill.

In the 10-mile time trial Wright was the comfortable winner from Guillemette and Tim Martin in 22.16 and out of the five women who started Bowditch placed first in 25.35, 35sec. quicker Lyn Coombs.

Tobyn Horton was first junior, James Roe first under-16 and Karl Robert first under-14.