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West Mids Regional RR Champs

Above: Raleigh's Liam Holohan took a well crafted win at Bridgnorth to take the West Midlands Regional road race championship.

Five laps of the undulating seventeen mile Severn Valley circuit took no prisoners and with almost gale force conditions around the whole course it was a race that would split from the early miles and indeed the day would prove too hard going for a lot of the riders.

A strong looking Mike Jones (Paramount CRT) and Team mate David Griffiths headed up the early break with Solihull CC's Conor O'Brien and ASFRA RT's Dominic Jelfs holding around thirty seconds on the chasing bunch on the first climb at Bromley. The strong headwinds were sapping the strength of the small breakaway group and by the second time around they had been reeled back into the chasing group.

Dan Fleeman(Raleigh) and Holohan were sitting some twenty seconds back in a small chase group with James Radcliffe (Freds), Cult Racing's Dan Bill and Richard Cartland (Team Corley) and were holding thirty seconds on the main bunch.

With just over half distance gone a group of five made what looked like a useful move off the front and seemed to be working well together. Dan Fleeman, Matt Clinton, Mike Jones, Steve Allen (Coventry Cycles) and Russell Falder (Mammoth) were to hold the lead until the last lap when Holohan and Cartland put the hammer down and jumped across to catch the five escapees.

With recent European races under his belt it was Holohan who made the jump on the final Bromley climb and with a slight downhill to the finish line no one was going to catch the Raleigh rider who took a fine victory.

Liam Holohan after the podium:

"It was a difficult day, very windy out there. I'm only 58 kgs so it was pushing me around a bit. We were doing 75kmh down one stretch and 35kmh down another. Me and Dan (Fleeman) know most of the guys here and most of them haven't got the race distance in their legs. We've just back from racing in Belgium doing back-to-back 170km races so we knew we'd got the distance in our legs so we just had to watch any dangerous moves. We messed up on the first lap letting guys go but we were really heavily marked all day but we knew we could put distance into everyone today. Guys were waiting for us to make the moves but we played it cool. Dan went in the group of five and I was happy because I knew he was the strongest guy there. I was going to sit in the second bunch but everyone kept messing about and wouldn't work together so I thought 'I'm not going to sit here' and when we went up the hill I went off the front but with two and half minutes to the front I thought the gap was too big and the strongest guys were already up the road but Richard (Cartland) came with me up the climb so we had a go, he was struggling a bit so I had to work but we got the gap down and I thought the front five would start to mess around towards the end and when someone said thirty seconds at the bottom of the last climb (Bromley) I went for it. But I wasn't sure if I'd recover for the sprint but I got back on and kicked just before the roundabout where the road goes up and no one was going to catch me when I was turning 53 x 11."

RESULTS

E,1,2,3

1ST LIAM HOLOHAN TEAM RALEIGH
2ND MIKE JONES PARAMOUNT
3RD RUSSELL FALDER MAMMOUTH LIFESTYLE
4TH DAN FLEEMAN TEAM RALEIGH
5TH STEVE ALLEN COVENTRY C.C
6TH MATT CLINTON MIKE VAUGHAN CYCLES
7TH RICHARD CARTLAND TEAM CORLEY CYCLES
8TH MARTIN FORD MAMMOTH LIFESTYLE
9TH DAVE GRIFFITHS PARAMOUNT
10TH DOM JELFS ASFRA RT
11TH JAMES RATCLIFF FRED WILLIAMS
12TH TONY KISS STRATFORD CC
13TH DAN BILL CULT RACING
14TH DAVID WATSON COVENTRY CC
15TH WILL PENN MAMMOTH LIFESTYLE
16TH SCOTT LAW TEAM QOROZ
17TH PHIL MASON CLIMB ON BIKES
18TH DAVID GILES MAMMOTH LIFESTYLE
19TH ANDREW PRINCE STAFFORD CC
20TH STUART GRIFFITHS CLIMB ON BIKES
21ST DAVID SAUNDERS CLIMB ON BIKES
22ND RICHARD WATSON PARAMOUNT