Yesterday saw the running of Race 2 in the North Island Trusthouse Series.
If you’ve been following my updates, you may be thinking ‘shouldn’t this be Race 4?’ – Race 2 was postponed, but all references on the website and results still call this Race 2.
Some fields were a little smaller for this race, as a lot of people didn’t have this date in their calendars when planning their race season, so they were either busy or resting up before Taupo on Saturday.One of the fields really affected by this was CAT2, with only 13 riders. WCNI again were dominant in this category with Joe Skerman 2nd, Glenn Kirk 4th, Josh Mulcahy 7th, Sam Wade 8th and Charlie Studd 9th. Sam retained the leaders jersey, Josh is sitting in 4th place and Wiremu Kaihau in 5th place overall.
They also took maximum team points, and with 22 points separating them from their nearest rival they retain their lead and will finish first in team points for the series.
CAT3
2 mechanicals affected the Bike Manawatu JT Coaching team, reducing their numbers to support the GC riders, but Chris Harris was able to position himself to finish in 3rd place with enough points to secure the leaders jersey. Andy Richardson finished in 12th place and Carl Dickason in 15th place. Bike Manawatu JT Coaching finished 3rd in the team points and with the difference between them and the nearest rival, they look assured of a 3rd place finish.
On the overall leaderboard, as well as Chris being in 1st place, Carl Dickason, Andy Richardson and James Buchanan are 12th, 13th and 15th respectively.
CAT4
was for the most part, an uneventful race. After losing some riders in the 1st lap, the majority of the riders stayed together in one bunch. Around 10kms from the finish, a Tararua Builders rider broke off the front and the bunch didn’t respond. On the descent of the penultimate climb, with some being more confident descenders, the bunch really spread out, and some riders were dropped. The remaining riders in the bunch climbed the final climb, and from there the race was on , and there was an attempt to catch the rider that got away. They caught him, but in a photo finish between 1st and 2nd, he just edged our Dan MacKay to nab 1st place. Other notable results were Graham Hall, Patrick Johnstone and Logan Mulcahy from Palmfeilds Bike Manawatu finishing 8th, 10th and 13th respectively. Toshi Yamauchi and Mike Thompson from Storage Manawatu finished 9th and 14th. The palmfeilds team picked up 10 points in the teams points, keeping them in 2nd place and with the difference between 2nd place and third place it looks like we should finish the series in 2nd place. Only 2 points separates Pedal Project (18 points) and Storage Manawatu on 16 points, if Storage Manawatu have another strong finish, we could see all 4 Manawatu teams finish in the top 3 for all categories.
The final race on December 4 is shaping up to be an exciting one, trying to protect the leaders jerseys in CAT2 and CAT3. Well done to all our riders, we appreciate your commitment to representing our region in this series.
Full results are available here https://www.webscorer.com/race?pid=1&raceid=298407
Photo Credit – Trust House Race Director & Team
