The club teams time trial championships was held in Buninyong on Sunday 22nd July. CCCC always put in lots of teams, and this year was no exception – 17 junior teams and 10 senior teams.
The committee’s decision that members of our Junior Development Program (JDP) have to have a ‘Gold’ racing licence (instead of a ‘KIDZ’ introductory licence) paid dividends – with 18 Under 11 & 13 riders nominating and making up 6 teams.
The CCCC tent was a hive of activity from before 8 am, with racing starting at 9 am. There was a team off at 1 minute intervals, with a few minutes gap between each age group. With all juniors starting between 9 am and 10 am, it was rather hectic! Despite a new purchase of 8 windtrainers for the CCCC Juniors trailer, at the height of warmups, there weren’t enough!
Onto the results – firstly the juniors.
In the Under 11 (6 km) category, we had one team consisting of Cam Helding, Nic Thomopoulos and Jack Throssell. They blitzed the 6 km course at a speed of 27 km/hr to get GOLD – despite Jack’s bout of croup the night before.
In the Under 13 girls (6 km) category, we had two teams – Alana Field, Georgia Cummings and Shanelle Freeman in one, and JDP’ers Allison Sturt, Maddy Currie and Magenta Pearsall in the other. Alana and Georgia were too quick for Shanelle – they averaged 30 km/hr to get the GOLD. The JDP team rode well together to take out the BRONZE – thanks to Magenta for “stepping up” to the Under 13 category to fill the team.
In the Under 13 boys (6 km) category, we had three teams. Ethan Height, Bill Simpson and Frank Hutton; Andrew Helding, Sam Bascombe and Matthew Hunt; and Aaron Clarisse, James Hunt and Ryan Wilson. Quite of few of these riders have started doing the CV Junior tours this year. The team of Ethan, Bill and Frank got the SILVER (average 29 km/hr) – between two Echuca-Moama teams getting the gold and bronze. Both the other teams had eventful rides – Andrew, Sam and Matt unfortunately got slowed down by a car in front of them on the uphill return leg, coming 5th; and James had a fall at the turnaround (after getting cleats the previous day) – he quickly got up and raced to the finish behind his teammates who came 6th.
We had two teams entered in the Under 15 women (20 km) category, but had to scrap one team on the day when Shoshana Kogan-Lazarus’s family had car trouble in St Kilda and had to turnaround, disappointed. Lele Kaltmann got put into the team with Emma Chilton and Mietta Greig-Hurtig. CCCC got the SILVER behind the super Brunswick team of Ruby, Emily and Greta – who caught all other teams in the first 7 km! Lele set herself the goal of completing the 20 km course in under an hour – but fell 15 seconds short.
In the Under 15 mens (20 km) category, we had four teams – so 4 start times within 6 minutes! By the time I’d arrived at 8 am, the super organised team of James Tickner, Trey Freeman and Ryan Koroknai had already found each other and registered! They got the GOLD medal (average speed 36 km/hr), and a second CCCC team of Alistair Christie-Johnston (tracked down at the Eildon Junior Tour last weekend to get a full team), Tom Benton and David Currie got the BRONZE. The team of Lachlan van der Velden, Will Height and Thomas Stevenson finished together to come 5th, and Sam McCabe and Angus Mennen rode together as a pair to come 6th (after Harry Sturt was unable to compete, much to dad David’s annoyance!)
There was only one team entry in the Under 17 (20 km) category – CCCC’ers Courtney Field (well known for her track sprinting), Nina Greig-Towers and JDP’er Grace Mennen. Courtney and Nina rode away from Grace early on, to average 32 km/hr to get the GOLD. It wasn’t until afterwards that Courtney realised that she was still on Under 15 gearing, cos she hasn’t done any road races this season!
We also had four teams in the Under 17 mens (50 km) category. Matthew Ross, Jordan Stannus and Jack Hickey averaged over 40 km/hr to get the GOLD medal. The second team of George Hamilton, Jayden Cooper and David Koroknai came 4th – way ahead of 5th, and only 30 seconds behind the bronze time. After a few rearrangements of teams, we had two pairs riding (instead of threes) – Ned Efe and Ben Andrews came 8th (ahead of Blackburn and Geelong with 3 riders) and Dylan Thompson and Alex Holden came 11th.
Eventually, teams started coming back from their 6 km or 20 km team TTs, and results started coming through. Those with “smartphones” were able to check the results live on metarace.com.au, thanks to the transponders fitted to everyone’s bikes. Once the announcer had the younger juniors results, lots of CCCC’ers were keen to know!
It wasn’t long until all of the 6 km and 20 km team TT teams were back, and had to fill in time until the presentations (at the end of all of the racing – final 50 km team started at 10:50 am, so finished shortly after 12 noon.) That meant, after cooling down, there was time to catch up, or play with mates.
We weren’t able to get a team together in either the Under 19 mens or womens categories – so Kyle Thompson and Matt Bennett had to ride in an “Elite men” team. (There was only one Under 19 mens team and no womens teams in the entire competition.)
To complete the chaotic hour of CCCC teams starting times (started at 9:04), the Masters women team of Sonia Throssell, Karin Coles and Amber Saunders started at 10:02 am. They finished with the BRONZE medal – an agonising 2.3 seconds behind 2nd placed St Kilda! One of the Hawthorn teams won, much to their visible delight.
There are two different categories for the Masters men – teams of 3 with a total age of > 135 years, and teams of 4 with no age restriction.
In the Masters 135+ category we had two teams. David Williams, Brian Smith and Malcolm Dow (Celtic Décor) got the BRONZE medal. Immediately behind them in 4th place were Warren Howe, Neale Sturt and Lawrie Hunt – Neale and Lawrie being dads of juniors who raced.
In the Open Masters category we managed to do a clean sweep of the podium with our three teams! The Giant / Celtic team of Gerard Donnelly, John Cain, Sean Wilkenson and Boyd Friis got the GOLD (average speed 43 km/hr), followed by Ciaran Jones, Andrew Weightmann, Mal Sawford and Dean Heathcote with SILVER and Cycling Inform team (wearing CCCC colours) of David Sturt, Danny Kah, Brendan Rowbotham and Harry Hanley the BRONZE – only 18 seconds behind.
In the Elite women category, there were two teams. Clare Dallat and, backing up from great results in the Melbourne to Ballarat, Nicole Whitburn (2nd), Steph Ives (9th) got the GOLD in an average speed approaching 38 km/hr. Bec Domange and Anna Collins were a rider down and came 5th.
In the Elite mens category, there were again two teams. The team of Luke Parker, Vaughan Bowman, (Sir) Michael Gallagher and Alex Smyth caused a stir at the start line when Alex wasn’t there … and ended up missing the start! (He was spotted riding along the footpath to try and chase them down, holding up the commissaire “sweep car” …) They got the SILVER medal behind Warragul, with an average speed of 44 km/hr. The second team of Stefan Imberger, Jason Kruger and Under 19’ers Kyle Thompson and Matt Bennett (3rd in Melbourne to Ballarat) were agonisly close to a medal – 2.4 seconds behind third-placed Ballarat-Sebastopol, after 50 km!!
Here is a list of the medals
7 Gold
- Under 11 boys
- Under 13 girls
- Under 15 men
- Under 17 women
- Under 17 men
- Open Masters men
- Elite women
4 Silver
- Under 13 boys
- Under 15 women
- Open Masters men
- Elite men
5 Bronze
- Under 13 girls
- Under 15 men
- Masters women
- Masters 135+ men
- Open Masters men
Finally, it was time for the presentations. I ended up helping Carol Armstrong sort the mess of returned numbers during the presentations … but this photo of the parents of the Under 11 boys in action during their podium presentation just had to be taken!
Thanks to everyone who helped make the chaotic day flow smoothly – coaches Julie Hunt, Rob Koroknai and Hilton Clarke, all the parents who ran around registering teams/getting their kids organised, and the Cycling Victoria officials/Ballarat Sebastopol volunteers. Special mention to the parents who managed to get their kids organised and race in a team themselves – Sonia Throssell, Neale Sturt and Lawrie Hunt.
Some photos have been posted on CCCC’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/115459020444/
Thanks to John Thomopoulos for taking lots of photos of the juniors warming up and racing, despite a knee injury. Link to download photos here:
https://rcpt.yousendit.com/1617415921/f4155b481c9fca08657f3dedb895874b
I particularly like this one of all the CCCC juniors at the presentations!
After juggling various pieces of paper with start times and team lists in previous years, I decided to try a different way of creating some order out of the chaos – especially with all the junior starting times. Start times and teams were pre-written onto the board, and results were written as they came to hand. (Note how the times are correct, but places wrong for the Open Masters Men – written a bit too “hot off the press” onto the board!)
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