John Bornhoft Memorial Hill Climb
John Bornhoft Memorial Hill Climb
Pete Tadros (In Gear RT) won the Kingston Wheelers' John Bornhoft Memorial Hill Climb on Saturday 3 October. Tadros finished 8 seconds ahead of Chris McNamara (Team Corley - Cervélo) and 11 seconds ahead of the promoting club's Steve Saunders.
The race was held on Surrey's Leith Hill with a one mile course up the main road on southern side of the hill.
On a blustery and cool morning race organiser Tim Lawn set himself off as the first rider. Lawn - who placed ninth in the National Hill Climb Champs in 1995 - held the top spot on the leaderboard for some time. But it was inevitable that his time would be beaten and it was Sylvain Garde (Addiscombe CC) who was the first to go faster, smashing Lawn's time by 20 seconds in a ride which eventually earned him fourth place. The final ten riders all justified their top seeding and set ever faster times and it was the last man off and race favourite Pete Tadros who set the best time.
"I stayed in the 17 all the whole time, spun in the flatter bits and out of the saddle when it got steeper… at the end it felt pretty hard" said Tadros after the event.
Tadros also broke the course record. The Hastings rider had set the record in 2007, only to see Bill Bell (Gemini BC) break it in 2008. But Tadros set a new time of 03:43.9 to reclaim his record. The women's prize was won by Leona Kadir (Kingston Wheelers) and the Kingston Wheelers (Saunders, Wallis and Breen) took the team prize too.
From Rob Enslin
