GUEST pro-cyclist Stuart Grimsey took the win in Footscray Cycling Club’s Mario Giramondo Invitational Handicap on Saturday.
The event pays homage to the late Mario Giramondo, who, as the founder of Giramondo Cycles in the late 1950s and a past winner of the Melbourne to Warrnambool cycling classic, is credited with introducing European cycling culture to Melbourne.
Grimsey, who this year started riding for the Drapac Professional Cycling team (headed by Mario’s son Agostino), also won last week’s FCC race at the notorious SheOaks circuit.
Eighty riders set off in six ability-based bunches, with the gun riders in scratch setting off last, 30 minutes after the first ‘limit’ bunch, and all bunches tried to maintain a high an average speed as possible to hold off what was the strongest scratch bunch the club has seen for some time.
Handicapper Mick Starcevic must have done his sums correctly, as the groups really only started merging on the sixth and final lap, and it was at this stage scratch started piling on the speed.
The red Drapac train, including 2007 Australian Road champion Darren Lapthorne, Grimsey, road and track champ David Pell and international ace Amir Rusli combined with the cream of Footscray’s A Grade to set an impossibly high pace.
“From the start scratch worked really well together,” Grimsey said. “It was such a hard course, I don’t think there was one part of the course that was easy.”
Grimsey thanked FCC and the Giramondo family, and spoke of his grandfather Vin Nuttal being a close mate and cycling buddy of Mario, and how he reminisced about the home brew that Mario would ply him with.
