05/04/09 - Bal Tab Handicap Road Race

What to say about Bal Tab!? Great weather, great racing (mostly), thrills, nearly some horsey spills and carnage in a mass sprint finish!  Sums it all up.

If there is anything to be learned from this morning, it’s that if you ride at the back, you’ll probably get delayed by a horse or something!

A great turn out of 48 riders split between all three divisions albeit not very equally, made for some fun racing. Division 3 were caught after 4/5 laps by Div 2 and the whole race came together on the last lap. As usual, a token horse carriage and trailer box turned up as is traditional at Bal Tab and most of the riders were graceful in negotiating their way around it fairly..

A few promising attacks failed to hold off Division 1’s progress in catching us all, notably from Alan Miller, closely followed and joined by Tony Moffa, Mike Keighrey, Bill Buist and Dave Mayman as well as a brief surge by the CCC’s a couple of times (sorry, no names as you were all in black, no club kit so no mention ;-).

In the inevitable sprint finish, Alistair Cann prevailed ahead of Adam Wojtkiewicz and velo Sport’s Dave Jardine.

Good riding from Anthony Chandlen in Division 1, Steven Hayley and Sam Carney again (except for Sam getting stuck in the ’horse freak out’ group) and well done to Gemma Derrick for persistance in finishing after a tough ride.

Full Results:

Thanks for CCC’s Malcolm Armes for organising this event and thank to the Marshalls for keeping us all safe in a very big bunch. Well done!