OKEHAMPTON Cycle Club held its open 10-mile trial last Thursday and the warm weather drew a good field of 38 riders from all over the South West with the expectation of fast times.
This proved to be the case as the winner Greg Sandy (Alcan-Bianchi) achieved a time of 19.54 and in doing so broke the course record, which he already held, by a staggering 20 seconds.
Second fastest was Sean Childs (Royal Navy CA) clocking 21.15.
There was a good turnout of club members taking part and from those Sean Quigley was fastest with a time of 23.50.
At the post race presentation chairman of the club Robert Szembek thanked organiser Nigel Williams for his hard work in putting on the event, together with the timekeepers, marshals and ladies providing the refreshments.
Club member Andrew Retter continues his unrelenting march towards achieving his goal of moving up to a first category road racer.
Despite the recent setback of a cracked bike frame and the disadvantage of having to ride a borrowed bike, he recently took part in the South West road race championship at Leedstown near Helston.
The weather was good and 45 competitors were at the start line to take on the triangular undulating course of approximately ten miles, which had to be covered eight times.
It proved to be a very competitive race with four riders making an early break and pulling out a two-minute lead on the chasing group.
With just under half the distance covered Andrew tried to get away from the main group and finally achieved this by being part of a four-man breakaway giving chase to close the gap on the race leaders with four laps to go.
However, the effort took a lot out of Andrew?s energy reserves and while maintaining a good tempo he slipped back from the chase for the leaders before being picked up by another group of three riders heading for the front.
This culminated in a small group sprint at the finish with Andrew being placed in tenth position and collecting another 12 points.
With his points total now standing at 87 he is in a good position to reach the target 100 points which he needs to be upgraded.