Guernsey Press

Despres and Bowie win age-group titles

TWO Sarnians earned age-group titles in the RRTC National Hill Climb Championship at Pea Royd Lane, Sheffield.

Published
The scale of the hill is visible as Nick Despres powers towards a V55 title. (Picture by Brian Jones, Kimroy Photography, 22972995)

Nick Despres and Karina Bowie won the M55 and W45 categories respectively after excelling on this year’s short-but-sharp climb of choice – of similar length to Le Val des Terres, but much steeper.

The championship was due to take place in Worcestershire, but was moved at short notice for undisclosed reasons.

Despres, who set the outright ‘Valdees’ record in 1991, tackled the challenging climb in 3min. 3.3sec to record Guernsey’s first triumph of the day.

The climbing veteran is seemingly beyond his ‘brute force and ignorance’ days and credited improved pacing for the result.

‘For me, it seems a really nice, consistent ride, which is really important for the pacing,’ said Despres.

‘I have hardly ever paced myself well in an event to get the optimal ride but I think, on Sunday, I did end up with a very consistent effort and I was happy to win my age group.’

Bowie was debuting but certainly hit a promising result in her maiden hill climb championship.

The Commonwealth Games cyclist was rewarded for a spontaneous change of focus with a 3-58.7 category win, ending a run of bad luck in major UK time trials.

The RTTC National 50 Mile Championship was postponed earlier this year and Bowie’s hopes were dashed by a mechanical in the more recent 10-mile event.

‘I was really pleased. I did not know what to expect because I’ve never done a hill climb in the UK before,’ she said.

‘I have been training for only a few weeks – since beginning of September – as I’ve had some late-season mechanicals and I wanted to do something different.’