CLUB champion Dom Dudkiewicz held on to took out Footscray Cycling Club’s Frank O’Brien Memorial handicap in mild and sunny conditions at Kirk’s Bridge.
The A-Grade riders started the race doing turns and not ripping the bunch apart for the initial run down towards Kirk’s Bridge, with the first real attacks occurring as the bunch headed back towards Little River.
Dudkiewicz said the bunch seriously upped the ante and ‘really hit it there when riders started putting the bunch into the gutter, we must have shelved half the field in the first lap’.
‘We shed rider after rider from there on, with Adam Murchie, Andrew Mackellar and Ben Johnson riding really strongly.’
By the end of lap three, the peloton was down to four riders, with Dudkiewicz taking the sprint from an unlucky Murchie whose foot had unclipped at just the wrong time. Murchie held off McKellar and Johnson for second.
Point Cook’s Darren Henneken, 43, took out B Grade, which was littered with many attacks on a windy day that saw most riders dropped.
‘It was a tough, hard and fast race, but once the initial damage was done there were only six of us so we worked well for the next few laps,’ Henneken said.
‘In the end it was down to only three of us when we got away on the secondlast straight, and I just hammered it at the last corner. I went out to smash myself today and I did.’
Henneken proved his ability by taking the sprint from exEuropean team rider Geordie Probert and down from A Grade Geoff Robertson.
C Grade’s race proved that age is no impediment to performance, with over-60 veteran and Werribee resident Tom Gray trouncing the field with a stunning attack on lap three to take a strong win.
With the bunch not intent on putting itself into the gutter, it was a relatively intact group that settled into taking turns and working its way through the 80km race, that is until Gray’s attack on lap three.
With all previous attacks being easily brought back by the co-operative bunch, Gray and Tony Murrell’s breakaway seemed doomed to failure, especially given the six willing chasers who were all pulling turns in chase.
But try as they might the 30-second advantage time trialler extraordinaire Gray and the experienced Murrell had, just could not be pegged back.
The chasers broke up after John Lucas attacked with 2km to go, and the race finished with the amazing Gray taking the sprint from Murrell.
An overly exuberant bunch of riders contested D Grade, with instructor Barry Cram having to rein in a few riders at the start.
‘They wanted to start racing straight out of the box, so I had to hold on to them for a little bit, because if I let them take off there wouldn’t be much of the bunch left by the time they get to lap three,’ Cram said.
Cram’s advice was heeded by the bunch, who had a good, solid race for the last 30km.
A bunch of five rode away from a chasing group of five, and that’s how it remained until the finish, with 18-year-old Wyndhamvale resident Nick Ashley, who has been knocking on the door for a win for quite some time, taking a well-deserved win in a memorial race dedicated to club legend Harry Jones.
