On Saturday the 4th of September a group of Ramblers members travelled down to Wanganui for the Wanganui GP. After an early morning wake up of 4:30am we got on the road to arrive in Wanganui just over an hour before the U17 start. When we arrived in Wanganui we were met by a sunny but cold and windy weather.
The course was the Nationals course for 2011 and it consisted of a 22km lap, much of which was either up or down. U17 completed 2 of the 22km laps which included 3 climbs all of which about the same length but different gradients.
The start of the race wasn’t unusual for U17 where it starts off fast. Everything stayed together until the second climb of the first lap (about 15km into it) where a break of 2 got up the road and with everyone except the 3 Ramblers riders Lance Welch, Mike Garrity and James Lochhead dropping. So it was left to us 3 to chase the break which had the race favourite in it. After a hard 15-16km chasing we caught them only to find Jacob (race favourite) smiling at us… We rotated until the start of the same hill they got away on the previous lap, and this again proved to be the challenging one. Jacob lifted the pace and Mike and Lance were able to hold on except James couldn’t quite keep contact after the work he’d done in the chase. Everything stayed together until the last climb 4km from the end where Jacob showed his dominance and got away. The sprint came and Mike Garrity had it in him to take 2nd from Vladimir 3rd and Lance 4th. James finished 5th, 45secs behind.
Other ramblers riders competing were Kerry Harford in B grade. Kerry had an awesome race and soloed the last 15km only to be caught 200m from the line by the fast peleton, but still managing to hold on for 5th!
And Fraser Gough rode in the large A grade field. Fraser looked comfortable in the A grade bunch except pulled out on the last lap.
(Thanks James - ed)
