Modella Road Races Saturday July 28

Classic winter weather  at Modella today, with the weather gods throwing brief but heavy rain bursts on riders midway through racing. Add in some cold wind and it really was a day for the hard riders!

Despite the less than hospitable weather, numbers were solid across all grades, with some great attacking racing unfolding.

Michael Gallagher (Jayco VIS) continued his fine tuning for the London Paralympics with an impressive solo win. He powered away from the bunch in the cross wind section along heads road, and time trialed the final 20 kilometres to hold off the chase by just a few seconds. Jayco team mate Stu Smith dominated the sprint for second, with James Rendall and Brett Kingston rounding out the podium.

Four riders survived a race of attrition in B Grade to fight for the win. No-one seemed to want to start the final dash for the line, which played into Alex Woff’s – clearly the fastest finisher – hands. Woff duly saluted ahead of Ron Purtle, Adam Versteege (Zoom Video Racing) and Stefan Imberger (Mainline Cycles).

It was a similar story in C Grade, with Ross Honicke freshest of the small group that fought out the sprint. Next best was local youngster Jaydon Manintveld from James Harrison and Marco Rando (Classix Racing).

George Sarris rode away from the D Grade bunch on the Heath Hill climb, with Amber Saunders closest to holding his wheel. Sarris kept up the pressure to the summit at Ripplebrook and rode to the line alone. Saunders was reeled in by Gerry Entwistle and Andrew Gorden on the run home and couldn’t match their turn of speed in the final 200 metres, but still recorded a solid fourth place finish.

CCCC will return to Modella on Saturday August 11 for the Les O’Mara Memorial Handiap, which will be raced over laps of the flat circuit through Longwarry, Tynong and Bayles.

Thanks to all the volunteers who braved the wintery conditions to allow a safe day’s racing. Joining Ann Johnstone, Monika Imberger and Doug Moody were traffic controllers Danny Kah and Adam Mulford, corner marshals James Shepherdson, Murray Spink, Graham Prosser, Dennis Toce and Vaughan Bowman, and lead car drivers Dale Maizels, Leigh Smith, Geoff Thompson, Cathy and Mark Zervaas and Nick Youngs. Graham and Vaughan also took on the critical task of setting up the extensive course signage required to comply with local council, VicRoads and Police permits.

Thanks also to Robyn Brock for today’s photos.