Location: Southwick, Portsmouth
Event: 15 April 2012
Warren Jesse (unattached) sprinted clear with the finish line in sight to win from a group that had formed midway through the Fareham Wheelers Road Race, and stayed away until the last climb.
The race was held in bright sunshine on a cold windy morning over eight and a half mile course used earlier in the season for the Perfs Pedal circuit. The riders completed five laps and they had to tackle the climb towards the finish six times.
The course was dry but the riders took the first couple of laps at a sedate pace while they checked out the course looking for places out of the wind to escape.
So after two laps there was the first of two primes and this was won by Simon Healey (Andover Wheelers) with the entire race together at this point. Once out onto the exposed section of the course riders were trying to find some shelter from the wind and gaps started to appear.
When the riders descended the hill back towards the HQ there was a split in the bunch and a group of five riders started to form at the front and pull out a ten second gap. Driving the race along at the front was Simon Fox (Vicious Velo) and Stuart Bettis (Team Terminator), with help from Simon Healey and James Fox (London Dynamo). As this group started to climb towards the finish line their slender lead was pulled back and the remainder of the bunch pulled them back.
At this point the bunch then splits into two groups with the leading group now forming and one by one riders got across and they got a lead of about one minute. The group was now fifteen riders strong and they soon started to increase their lead to over one minute thirty seconds leaving the remainder to fragment as gaps started to appear.
The second of the primes was on lap four and this was won by Simon Fox although the group was still all together. The penultimate lap saw the leading group’s gap extend to one minute fifty as they went through the finish line and the race was over for the bunch as it was now split.
The leading group stayed together until the final climb and with less than 1km to go Warren attacked and pulled away turning into the finish straight first and with daylight between him and second place. After Warren had finished there was a sprint for second between Phillip Touzeau (Guernsey Velo Club) and Matthew Conner (SuperNova Cycles) and these two were a few seconds clear of Matthew Osborn (Guernsey Velo Club).
Result:
1 Warren Jesse (unattached)
2 Phillip Touzeau (Guernsey Velo Club) @ 6sec
3 Matthew Connor (Supernova Cycles @ same time
4 Matthew Miles (In Gear-Quickvit)
5 Matthew Osborn (Guernsey Velo Club)
6 Matt Ullmer (Team Traveller)
7 Callum Bramley (Langdale Lightweights RT)
8 Matthew Melville (Python RT)
9 Simon Healey (Andover Wheelers)
10 Nigel Williams (Python RT)
British Cycling would like to thank the organising team, officials and everyone else who helped promote this event. Our sport could not exist without the hundreds of people, many of them unpaid volunteers, who put in many hours of hard work running events, activities and clubs.
