Club Races
Mayo by a Millimeter (or two!)
Noradjuha Handicap, Sunday 16th November 2008

	Peter Mayo

After 60km of racing, it came down to a matter of centimetres when Peter Mayo just edged out Stuart King to take out the Grampians Vets Cycling Club’s Horsham Noradjuha Handicap last Sunday.

With riders battling into a difficult head wind for the first half of the race, Mayo and King, along with fellow 6 minute riders Danny Monaghan and Steve Monks, used their collective power to overtake the limit riders Meg Parnaby, Les Power and Tom Eldridge soon after Noradjuha.

This combined bunch then worked together to try to hold off the scratch riders, Ian Blackie, Alan Barnett, Drew Heard and Frank Kean, who had caught the 3 minute riders Tim Schneider, Daryl Elliott, Peter Parnaby and Leon Gibson on the leg across to Nurrabiel.

With 15 kilometres to go, the leading bunch of riders was still out of sight to the following riders, but some well co-ordinated team work from the large chasing group saw them reaching speeds of over 50km per hour, and they were gaining fast.

However, both groups started to see riders buckle under the strain, and both started to shed riders along the way.

At the last turn, with 5km to go, the chasing group of riders was only 400m behind, but the leading group managed to hang on with Mayo just inching ahead of King in a hard fought sprint to claim victory. Danny Monaghan was close behind in third place.

The chasing bunch of riders closed to within 100m at the finish, with Frank Kean first scratch rider across the line to record the fastest time of 1 hour 34 minutes.