Hounslow & District Wheelers Good Friday 25

A strong north wind made the season opening club 25 a calvary for the riders and produced a result board with a pre-war look – pre 1914 that is. However a select group appeared to be unaffected by the conditions on Good Friday, March 21.

Wouter Sybrandy, this year more usually to be seen riding road races for the Sigma Sport team, still retains his second claim membership of the Hounslow. His 58 minute 14 second ride is remarkable considering the difficult and hilly nature of the West of Windsor course, where any sub hour ride is unusual, even today when 30 mph is the benchmark of the ambitious. Back at the HQ Wouter, who is only in his third racing season, commented “Naturally my main focus now with Sigma Sport is road racing, but I’ve always liked time trials and if, like today, I get a chance to ride one, I’ll be there. My schedule for the next few weeks includes a couple of team time trials with Sigma, but I also have my eye on the National Championship time trials.

The event attracted a full field of forty riders, including seventeen privates (i.e. non members of the Hounslow club) and this seems to be another example of the current mysterious trend away from open events to club races. Some of the older members who remember fields of less than ten in previous decades were amazed, and one was heard to say: “I only entered to make up the numbers, I came out hoping to find the event cancelled because of the weather, and now I’m here I feel obliged to ride because I understand would be riders have been turned away.”

Paul Holdsworth’s apparently sub-standard ride was clearly the result of the injuries he received in last week’s road race crash, while Jeff Marshall, who described his ride as a ‘personal worst’ nevertheless won the veterans’ age standard award with a plus of 12 min. 26 seconds.

1. Wouter Sybrandy 58.14
2. Mark Hutt 1. 0.38
3. Rob Gilmour 1. 2.01
4. Brent Skinner 1. 3.50
5. Paul Innes 1. 4.57
6. Paul Holdsworth 1. 6.12
7. Jeff Marshall 1. 7.39.