Club Races
Monks and Blackie Blast Field Apart
Glenorchy Wal Wal 48km Handicap
Sunday 4th May 2008

Scratch riders Steve Monks and Ian Blackie blasted their way through the rest of the field in last Sundays Grampians Vets Glenorchy Wal Wal 48km handicap, leaving a trail of worn out riders behind them.

	Steve Monks

Monks and Blackie gave limit riders Sean Prins and Les Power a 12 minute start, with Dean Hayward, Peter Mayo and Stewart King following shortly after on 7 minutes.

Allan Barnett, Michael Kelly, Tony Lloyd and Peter Blair gave the scratch riders 2 and a half minutes, a margin that should have given the 2 scratchmen a hard task to catch them. However this is exactly what they did, and only half way through the race at Wal Wal township.

Meanwhile the limit pair were still working well with no other riders in sight when they turned back onto the Murtoa Glenorchy road, and looked like they might make it to the finish. However the combined strength of the two scratch bunches saw them reel in the 7 minute riders at Glenorchy, as well as Les Power, who by this time had lost contact with Prins.

This combined bunch then set off after Prins, but soon splintered quickly on the Glenorchy Roses Gap road under pressure from Blackie and Monks, with only Dean Hayward able to keep up.

With 2 km to go Prins looked back when he heard the sound of the riders upon him and almost lost it in the gravel, but with some quickly developing bike handling skills managed to stay upright.

However, he couldn’t stay with them, and Monks and Blackie powered on to take line honours, with Monks first, Blackie second, followed shortly later by Hayward and then Peter Blair.