Mystery & Intrigue

The Brian Harford Mini Tour is one of the 7th Wonders of the Cycling Nelson Club world (one of the other wonders is unsolved mystery about why the CN 40km Club Champs is a scratch race yet the CN 80km Club Champs is a handicap?).  This year as usual the end result was not entirely what anybody expected.

The race is run in 3 stages.  The first stage is a short scratch start race from the club rooms to Seaton Valley - the stage may appear to be a simple scratch race but in fact there is a sealed handicap which is applied to the results at the end of the race.  This almost always ensures some form of controversy.

So how did it go?

Knowing that Chris Nicholson was sure to apply some pressure at some point on the first stage I thought it would be a good idea to get near the front as we came into the hills.   There is a subtle difference between being at the front and being off the front which I haven't yet fully grasped - thankfully I was joined by Cameron Karwoski from Blenheim and together we built up a reasonable lead.  Turning into Seaton we were joined by Chris N who seemed to appear out of thin air.  So it all came down to a sprint - well at least I got third!

The second stage was a timetrial from the Mapua school to the top of Harleys road.  I managed to catch the guy in front of me just before the start of the Ruby Bay hill.  Chris N caught me just past the begininng of the climb up Harleys.  I pretty much matched him all the way and ended up finishing the stage in 2nd place.

The final stage was a handicap race back from the bottom of Harleys, over the Moutere Hill and finishing in Redwood Valley road.  We had a small group of 5 consisting of myself, Chris N, Henry Kersten, Gary Overend and Cameron.  Henry was in trouble from the beginning and so the chasing was down to Cameron, Chris and me.  We stayed together coming over the hill and reached 75kph chasing down the other side, picking up groups along the way.  As predicted it came down to a sprint with only one group ahead of us (by about 30m).  

So why the mystery?  Well given the good performance we expected Chris N to win the whole thing (something which I think he expected as well) however in the end the winner was declared to be fellow Nelson Alarms team mate - Chris Charles!  Chris was as suprised as the rest of us as his best placing had been 4th or 5th on the fisrt stage and the time trial.  Further investigation showed that  Chris C had benefited from a sealed handicap of 30sec, which along with his good TT and a reasonable placing in the final stage had put him in the lead.

This wouldn't be the first time that Chris C has managed to achieve something like this and I doubt that it will be the last.