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Preview: Litherland Circuit League

Cycle Racing at Litherland Sports Park, Boundary Road, Litherland, Sefton, Merseyside L21 7LA

As the Litherland Circuit League racing programme in 2010 was such a success the organisers have agreed to extend the programme for the 2011 season to twenty consecutive weeks with their new sponsor ‘High on Bikes' who is based at Scarisbrick in Lancashire.

The Merseyside Cycling Development Group underpins the initiative and is expecting even more riders wanting to take part in the racing, which this year starts on Wednesday evening the 6th April 2011 and continues every Wednesday evening through to the 17th August.

Over the past two years the MCDG has developed, through their coaching session programme, which has been coached at Litherland by Barry Warriner and his coaching team, a group of youth riders up to ‘A' category, who now have the experience to race. This coaching initiative will be carried on through the summer to ensure the riders make the required progress, and will be mentored by the coaching team on race days throughout the racing series.

The youth categories will have its own race programme, but will still be part of the main race promotion which is based on the results for each of the individual races for each category of boys and girls each week. Besides BC licence points being awarded League Points are also, awarded for placings each week. See Merseyside Cycling Development Group website for more detail.

There will also, be a 500m youth handicap series which is a memorial race for the Bert Owens trophy on a points basis over the series, where points are awarded for riders with the best results of the first four placings in 7 events of the whole series. This event has free entry for all youth riders who have raced in the main race programme and are at the required standard to race in this series. As daylight in April 2011 is at a premium this event will not commence until the beginning of May. Further details can be found on the website www.merseysidecyclingdevelopment.org

The whole Litherland Circuit League racing programme is a series of 20 evenings this year running from April through to August with affiliated clubs volunteering to oversee and run the administrative side of events within the programme under the umbrella of the Litherland Circuit League. The senior events are not open to male Elite or first category riders (seniors and juniors), but all other categories are catered for including seconds, juniors, ladies as well as third and fourth category riders. Points will be awarded for each category that finish each week. The points to be gained are shown on the MCDG website.

It would aid the organisers, and save time, if riders would get their registration forms from the MCDG website and post them off with their cheques to the league treasurer. All riders must register before they can ride, and after that entries are all EOL.

To reduce fees to riders there is reduced registration fees for club riders if their club has affiliated to the Litherland League. An added incentive for clubs affiliated is youth riders pay reduced entry fees to enter events. So if you haven't sampled the racing at Litherland, why not come and join us and have a go.

It is safe to say that Litherland Sports Park is the perfect place to hold cycling events, as its facilities are second to none, that, along with all the generous help from the staff makes it so.

Contacts are...

Andy Gibson Secretary Email. a.gibson@staff.bluecoatschool.net

Paul Paterson Treasurer Email. p.paterson@hotmail.co.uk

Barry Warriner Coaching Email. barrywarriner@blueyonder.co.uk