Location: Roxwell, Chelmsford
Event: 16 September 2012
Report: James Evans/Snowdon Sports
St Ives CC’s Paul Fielding managed to hold off four rivals to win the Shaftesbury CC Road Race with a sprint finish.
By the end of the first lap of the 65-mile race, a group of 12 had broken free of the bunch and had built up a lead of a minute-and-a-half.
Some of the stronger teams were well represented in the starting line, with four and five representatives and this helped them to push riders into the top 12. The leaders worked well together and further stretched the lead back to 13th to two minutes.
Then, on the penultimate lap, a couple of St Ives riders attacked, splitting the dozen up and leaving the group six-strong.
A number of attacks also took place in the bunch and this saw a split too. But they soon came back together and swallowed up a couple of the stragglers from the original leading 12.
The top six now had a lead of a minute and 45 seconds and the twisted country roads that approached the finish line were host to a sprint which was taken by Fielding, 41.
Vince Divine of Finchley RT and Felix Barker of Cambridge CC were next over.
Results:
2/3/4:
1 Paul Fielding St Ives CC
2 Vince Divine Finchley Racing Team
3 Felix Barker Cambridge CC
4 Malcolm Smith St Ives CC
5 Gonzalo Rodriguez East London Velo
6 Russell Ford Glade CC @ 8 secs
7 Jonathan Shubert High Wycombe Cycling Club @ 1 min 46 secs
8 Gavin Moore Pro Cycle Hire UK Racing Team @ 1 min 57 secs
9 Trevor Ormes Velo Schils - Interbike RT @ 2 mins 4 secs
10 Lee Rowe Finchley Racing Team
11 Gray Turnock Finsbury Park CC
12 James Browne VC Norwich
13 Frank Rawlins North Road CC
14 Howard Lightfoot Cambridge CC
15 Steven Hurrell Strada-Sport
16 Edward Farnell Cambridge CC
17 Luke Hattersley St Ives CC
18 Osama Assem Finchley Racing Team
19 Mark Hurrell Velo Schils - Interbike RT
20 Ben Locke Braintree Velo Cycle Racing Club
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.
