South Pacific Championships
Maryborough, Easter 2010

Once again the women in the club led the way in this years South Pacific Championships, held at Maryborough over the Easter Break, with both Stephanie Frawley and Crystal Wemyss taking out 1st placings.

Mildura based club member Stephanie Frawley, a time trial specialist, clocked the fastest women's time of the day, averaging about 40.5kph over the tough out and back 15km course. Stephanie competes in the Australian Championships at Ballarat each year, and does well against Australia's best young riders.

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Crystal Wemyss

Crystal Wemyss, competing for the first time in the South Pacific Championships, showed her great potential in the sport by taking out both the road championship and time trial events in her age group.

Having only taken up the sport of cycle racing with the Grampians Vets club in January of this year, Wemyss has improved rapidly, first showing her time trialling ability in a club event several weeks ago, where she clocked the fifth fastest time of all club members.

During the Maryborough time trial event, and riding a normal road racing bike, Wemyss clocked the 3rd fastest overall women’s time of the day, only beaten by Frawley and Geelong rider Phillipa Read, both riding specialised bikes. Crystal averaged 36.07kph

Other Vets members to do well in the age group championship events were Meg Parnaby, who came third in the road championship, and second in her time trial (32.53kph), and Alan Barnett, who rode extremely well to come third in his time trial event (36.29kph).

Danny Monaghan was hampered by a cold, but still placed 7th in his time trial (37.5kph), in the most competitive age group of all, with the winner riding the fastest time of the day (43.2kph), beating many of the younger age groups.

Gerard O'Brien was one of the strongest in his road race age group, and attacked all day, along with Bob Brizell. However the Bob attacked up the final hill, and Gerard missed his wheel. They both got clear but Bob had a break on Gerard, and so they both rode solo, with the pack catching Gerard when he ran out of puff with about 1km to go.

On Easter Monday, a handicap event for all riders was held over a tough 65km course, with the men and women all competing together. Amongst the 140 riders setting out, were local club members Meg Parnaby, Les Power, Tony Rathgeber, Tony Lloyd, Peter Parnaby and Alan Barnett.

Meg Parnaby made the most of a good mark, and together with lots of hard work, placed second, with Tony Lloyd next best in 10th place.