Ninth place for Horton in national road race

BELGIUM-BASED Guernsey Velo Club rider Tobyn Horton finished in a creditable ninth place in the British Under 23 National Road Race Championship in Oakley, Buckinghamshire. The 19-year-old, who earlier this year represented Guernsey at the Commonwealth Games, was the sole Channel Islands rider in a field of 67 of the country's top espoir riders.

The race, held over 96 miles, saw an early breakaway of five establish a minute lead over the main pack by the end of the second five-mile lap.

By lap four, the leading group had grown to nine, with the bunch including Horton trailing by two-and-a-half minutes. With none of the pre-race favourites in the leading group, the chasing bunch was trailing by more than eight minutes by the time the race tackled the one-mile climb out of Chearsley Green on lap seven.

Next time around, the lead was still over eight minutes, but the pace of the main pack had been whipped up by Matt Brammeier, the pre-race favourite riding for the professional DFL team.

On the climb, the chasing group split, with Horton latching onto the first bunch as they started to pull back the leaders.

In the next five miles, the chasers closed the gap by two minutes, with Horton putting in several fast turns at the front of the flat sections on the course where his experience of Belgian Kermesse riding was paying dividends.

With news of the chase, the leaders upped the pace over the next two laps, with two of the early break, Steve Lampier, of the Pyrenees-based Tarbes team, and Andy Wyper, of the Dutch-based Heinz von Heiden squad, being dropped.

Over the next two laps of the small circuit, the leaders maintained a six-minute lead over the chasing group containing Horton, but on the final climb on the small circuit after 60 miles of racing, the lead was down to 5min. 42sec.

With the race at two-thirds distance, it moved on to three laps of a 12-mile circuit which included an extra one-and-a-half- mile climb at Dorton to test the riders.

By the end of the first of the finishing circuits, the race lead had fallen to 5min. 18sec. with Brammeier leading the chase. The leaders were now down to a group of five.

Twelve miles on and with just 12 miles to go the lead had been cut to four minutes with Horton mixing it with the chasing group of 15.

The final lap saw the chasers and leading group split as the race distance and hills took their toll.

The final time up Dorton Hill with less than a mile to go saw the strong riders make a final bid for the championship, with Peter Bissell, of the Arctic Shorter Racing team, winning from James Spragg after more than four-and-a-half hours of racing.

In ninth place, Horton was 5min. 20sec. behind the winner.

With backing from Velo Club sponsor KPMG, Horton now heads back to Belgium with the possibility of a place in the six-stage Tour of Serbia later this month as his next target before returning to the UK to ride the senior national road race championship in Beverley, Yorkshire, at the end of the month.