Timmins takes silver in nationals

LEONGATHA Cycling Club’s Austin Timmins’ was the silver medalist in the M17 team pursuit at the National Titles on the weekend.
Timmins participated at the titles held in Tasmania in the Victorian Junior team.
The club has had several Juniors come along to training on Wednesday night over the past few weeks and Friday night saw Caleb Murphy line up for his first race night; a big learning curve for him.
This Friday the club will run the Senior track titles and earlier at 3pm is expecting some members to be on hand for the Koonwarra section of The Great Southern Koonwarra Rail Trail opening.
As usual members have been busy racing at other venues: Harrison McLean grabbed a win at the Sunday morning criteriums at Warragul and Bernadette Fitzgerald was part of the Gippsland Girls team racing in the State cycling road series in East Gippsland.
Thomas McFarlane is putting in some impressive training behind the motor pacer on Wednesday night training in preparation for his ride in the Bendigo Maddison over the March long weekend and many of the road riders are getting ready for a road season start in mid April.
The great weather is also seeing a number of girls/women getting out on the bike with the club moving to try and get a regular girls riding group out and about.
Friday night saw a good roll up of Junior track riders and helped the club run the club track titles for this group.
First racing for the night last week was the one lap time trial.
In the Senior field the best time went to Steve Allen 32.18 followed by Rob Waddell 35.90 and Graham Hans at 36.00.
In the Juniors Oliver McLean was feeling the pressure from Thomas Fitzgerald from the previous week and responded well with a new personal best and quickest time of 34.93 even with a poor start.
Next was Thomas at 37.08, down on his best due to some dental work the previous day.
Kaleb Jans was in third place at 39.00.
The Senior scratch race over six laps saw Steve Allen take the honours from Rob Waddell and Graham Jans whilst the Junior field of ten riders was split into an A and B fields.
The A grade four lap race went to Oliver McLean whilst Kaleb Jans put in a great ride to take second ahead of Thomas Fitzgerald.
In the B Grade field Felicity Waddell rode a patient race before racing home strongly ahead of Sulli Herbert and Harry Herbert.
The next round of racing for the Juniors was the track title sprint derby.
Kaleb Jans, Oliver Mclean, Josh Wight and Thomas Fitzgerald made it through to the final.
In the sprint derby final it was a clear win to Oliver from Thomas, Kaleb and Josh.
In the consolation sprint derby it was Felicity winning from Jack Allen and Harry Herbert.
The Juniors finished their track titles with a five lap scratch race and following a sedate first few laps Oliver lifted the pace and spread the field making sure of the win.
The minor placings went to Thomas and Kaleb.
The club title placings were also in the same order.
The Senior two lap handicap saw Michael Blogg (140m) ride strongly to take the win just ahead of a bunch finish which saw Steve Allen (scr) take second and Kevin Feely (40) third.
The Junior handicap saw riders split into two heats – a front markers’ heat and a back markers’ heat, which was a new experience for these riders.
In the first heat Jack Allen, Josh Wight and Kaleb Jans were the three to make it to the final.
In the second heat it was Nick Blogg, Felicity Waddell and Sulli Herbert through to the final.
In the final, Nick Blogg (100) was again away to a good start and powered home a narrow winner from a charging pack which saw Kaleb (30) grab second and Felicity (45) sneak home for third.
The Senior re-handicap over two laps saw Graham Jans (85) make the most of a 15m lift in mark take the win from Rob Waddell(60) and Kevin feely (45).
This was followed by an eight lap scratch race which once again saw Steve Allen beat off the challengers leaving Kevin Feely in second and Rob Waddell third.
To fill out the program the Seniors also had two sprint heats.
In the first, Kevin Feely had a narrow win over Rob whilst in the second heat it was a win for Graham Jans ahead of Michael Blogg.

Power away:Josh Wight was underway in his one lap time trial after being held and released by Dane Herbert, while others awaited their turn on Friday night at the velodrome in Leongatha.

Short URL: /?p=17753

Posted by Sarah Vella on Mar 1 2016. Filed under Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry