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- Written by Kirsty Kaihau
Once again the Hawkes Bay Ramblers Cycling Club held another very successful HUB tour in Hastings on 13-15 January 2012.
The Hawkes Bay weather turned on a beautiful hot weekend but the winds were a test of courage and commitment to most as the prologue started on Friday night with very strong north westerly gusts.
There were many riders winning top ten positions in the 6km prologue (or time trial), but with the win of over 40 seconds to Kate Stewart in the U17 girls race was the most impressive win of the night. Coming in close behind was Ruby Perry finishing 3rd in the U17 girls prologue. George Roberts also finished exceptionally well in the prologue coming 7th in the U17 boys grade, with Matiu Kaihau finished 13th in his first A-Grade prologue. Kelsi Eccles was in great form over the weekend winning two stages of the B-Grade Women's races earning the huge privilege of wearing the yellow jersey.
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- Written by Glenys Taylor
Tuesday nights racing fell victim to the wet summer and racing was called off so the Thursday was used as reserve day. An email was sent to the club on Wednesday morning asking for the Thursday night option to be advertised on the clubs website but as most sane people are on holiday at this time of the year, the request was not able to be actioned. Fortunately a wise group of eleven remembered the reserve day option and arrived for racing at the normal 5.45pm. While the numbers may have been down the talent clearly wasn’t as a number of records were either set or broken on the mild calm and overcast night.
Read more: Results for Track cycling Thursday 12th January 2012
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- Written by Barry Gilliland
It is Sunday 18 December and a depleted field of 29 riders is setting off one at a time to tackle the formidable Waihi Midsummer Madness Time Trial. This is the toughest road time trial event in New Zealand. I make it 127km with about 1300 vertical metres of climbing. There is some great scenery…but I have to admit it is hard to fully appreciate that during the ride.
There were 47 names on the start sheet, but only 29 started. The sensible ones figured the riders would face not midsummer conditions, but something more akin to midwinter conditions and decided not to start. They were right. Last year the little black box on my handlebars recorded an average temperature of 26.8C. This year it was 9.5C.
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- Written by Ian Gray
Track racing up to Christmas has been a great success and here’s hoping for an even better half to the end of March 2012. Club Championships are to come and West Coast North Island Championships at Wanganui on 28th and 29th of January.
Highlights of the season so far:
· A record number of bikes hired out (37)
· A record number of 50 riders made it onto the track for a Club night in November.
· Four Club records broken and one established.
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- Written by Steve Stannard
A small bunch of around 20 riders started in A-grade; not many but a pretty good field which included two Pure Black riders (seemingly doing their last race in that team…), USA-based pro Jeremy Vennell, the Wheel-Works team, and a few from the Sth Island. In contrast, there were over 50 riders in B grade and 22 in C grade. The women’s race had only nine, but good quality riders.
I’ve done this race once before - running 6th in 2006 when Mike Torckler won – and thoroughly enjoyed the (very) hilly course.