SERRL Sevenoaks Weald 01/04/07

A bright sunny but chilly morning greeted us for the first race of the season on open roads.

There was a full field signed up for this race and Andy Hawes and new signing Nigel Brazier had to wait until the last minute before they knew if they had a ride or not.

With all numbers pined on and ready to go Medway Velo had 4 riders in the bunch with Jayson Weale and on his first ever open RR Karl Smith making up the rest of the quartet.

The race set off with a leisurely pace as the lead car has seemed to forget that they had the neutralised flag still waving in the wind, once this went in though Gary Banfield Kent Cycles RC made the first move of the day, he was allowed to go down the road on his own for half a lap before being reeled back in.

From there Julian Cann of Gemini BC decide he was going to take a chance and with his lead dangling at around 30 seconds he made good to keep away.  He was joined on the 5th lap by 4 further riders James Dear in Gear RT, Martin Dunford, Downland Cycles Joe Hemnant London Dynamo and our very own Jayson Weale.

It was on the 6th lap that disaster struck two of the Velo boys with Andy being caught out by a crash that happened right in front of him, unable to rejoin the main race he worked well with 3 other riders but opted not to finish the race with 2 laps remaining.  Karl Smith was the second Velo to fall foul of an incident this time though riding down a pot hole and damaging his levers rendering them inoperable.

With only 2 Velo's left in the race it was down to Jayson & Nigel to fly the flag, Jayson was working really well with the leading group who had pulled out a lead of nearly 2 minutes, while Nigel had managed to clip of the front of the bunch with a further 3 riders to make up a chasing group although Nigel wasn't chasing too hard as he didn’t want to catch Jayson.

With the sound of the last lap bell ringing in their ears the breakaway were set to make up the first 5 positions between them leaving 6th place for Nigel's group to fight for.

The finish on the Sevenoaks course allows for you to see the bunch coming from at least 1KM as it gently rises up to the bridge across the A25 the breakaway group had splintered just slightly in the last 500 meters and unfortunately Jayson was just piped on the line by James Dear to take an excellent 2nd place.

Nearly 2 minutes later Nigel lead in the remains of his breakaway to take a well earned 6th place in his first ride I Velo colours.

All in all not a bad day out for the Velo boys, we are all looking forward to our next event at the Betts hanger circuit near Dover on Saturday.

Andy