Caswell Clinches A Narrow Victory!

28/08/2011

Round 17 of the Fulford Cycles Time Trial League was a one mile ascent of Darley Head and twenty three riders faced the challenge. This hill starts with a moderate burst of incline followed by a long stretch as the road steadily rises towards the steepest pitch between two sharp bends. There follows a tantalisingly short almost flat section leading to a two hundred metre incline before the finish, which is in sight after the final steep bend. This event has seen some close battles in the past, with a tie in 2007 in 4:45. This year the battle was going to be hard to call between Nova’s Paul Caswell, Simon Ketteringham and Duncan Mullier, with amazing school-boy Edwyn Oliver-Evans the dark horse. The conditions were worse than last year, with a head wind, Duncan Mullier though went early putting in a stunning time of 4:46, just one second outside of the veterans’ record that he equalled the previous year. Mullier was the minute man of Oliver-Evans who gave it everything to break his own school-boy record, dipping under the magic five minutes mark with 4:55. Next up was Simon Ketteringham, desperate to get at least one over rival Mullier. At the steep bend both riders clocked exactly the same time and Ketteringham gained an advantage of 3.5 seconds by the end of the steepest pitch only to lose a massive 8.5 seconds within sight of home to finish in 4:51. Last man off was Paul Caswell who lost 7.5 seconds to Mullier on the final sprint-climb to the finish from the steep bend, but he’d already put a herculean effort in over the steep section and was 8.5 seconds up and so won in a time of 4:45 by a single second. So the top four were separated by ten seconds but the win leapfrogged Caswell over the injured Dave Morris into equal fourth place in the league table with Simon Ketteringham. The next finisher was Junior Will Staveley in 5:08 just four seconds ahead of Rob Senior in 6th (5:12). Jonty Bright was a further fourteen seconds back (5:26) in seventh and Tim Jarvis (5:43), Richard Timms (5:50) and super vet Goeff Morgan (6:06) completed the top ten.

The ladies race saw the first defeat of the season for 2010 and 2011 Ladies’ Champion Joanne Ketteringham, being on the wrong side of five seconds to Corinne Mitchell, Corinne finishing in 6:29 and Joanne in 6:34. Joanne shouldn’t be too disappointed as hill climbing is a very different beast to standard TTs, with many riders staying away. The final event of the 2011 League Season is the four mile climb from Lofthouse to Scarhouse Dam. A climb that tips favour back towards the pure timetriallers. 

Comments powered by Disqus