June 2005. Otley Town Centre Crit., LVRC Ray Levers and Tom Simpson Road Races

Many of you may have thought that this column has “climbed off” never to be seen again. Not so! Granted it is mid January 2006 and you’re still waiting for June 2005’s instalment. But successful road racing, and column writing for that matter, requires an element of surprise. So imagine my surprise when I received a letter of resignation from Web Master Saint because he was fed up of the abuse from “…that tub of lard masquerading as a column writer”. He instructed his lawyers to “…make sure that lardy troll never puts pen to paper again!” Who does he think he is Lance Armstrong? Anyway 6 months of bitter wrangling between the ‘Lardy Troll’ and the ‘Wanna be Lance’ have resulted in a new, and hopefully, less sensitive web master. And I must say ‘Web Master Mike’ (Dixon) has upped the anti with our new all singing and dancing web site. However, Web Master Mike will have to sacrifice his goal of a 21 minute 10 [mile time trial] in order to devote the time needed to maintain the quality of our new site. The expectations of regular YRC web site visitors are high and we all hope he doesn’t bonk mid season.

Oh yes, and for what it’s worth here’s what happened on the roads in June 2005. June has the greatest race in the 3/4th cat calendar…The Otley Town Centre Crit…. and there’s always some racing virgin wanting to try out their legs in front of the throngs of spectators. So late one May evening my phone rings with John-Paul, who was ‘Strong as an Ox’ in February’s reliability rides, wondering if the Otley Town Crit would be a good introduction to road racing. Now even spectators know that the Otley race is fast, furious and not for the faint hearted (or virgin racers). One hundred amateur riders fighting for the honour of a two armed salute in front of 3,000 cheering spectators while descending from East Chevin Hill at 45 mph is a recipe for risks and mayhem. So I tried to persuade ‘Strong as an Ox’ to consider a different ‘first ever’ road race using typical Geordie subtlety “You’d have to be a nutter to race at Otley”. Strong as an Ox dismissed my advice as some perverse form of Geordie banter, so it came as no surprise to see him climbing off, with a face white with fear, on the second lap of the race.

By then, however, the Hippo was well off the back. But being an experienced road racer the Hippo knew that a point would come in the race when spectators would be uncertain whether he was off the front or off the back. For the Hippo, those few minutes when he could live the dream of pretending to be off the front, were worth the race entry fee on its own. In fact this became the highest point of the Hippo’s 2005 racing season. But all good things must come to an end and the commisaire threatened to disallow the Hippo’s BC licence if he didn’t climb off to let the main field through. For the second year running The Hammer got to the end of the race in the bunch - all he needs now is a sprint. Not that it would matter at Otley because young Adam Blythe and ‘older’ Graham Baxter had gone off the front from the start and had spent the entire race fighting it out on their own, with Adam taking the final sprint.

Other activity during June 2005 included The Ray Levers LVRC road race in hilly Rotherham, which had both the Hammer and the Hippo off the back by the half way point. In fact the effort reduced the Hippo to a coughing wreck and he didn’t recover in time for the Tom Simpson memorial LVRC race in Doncaster. This left the Hammer to restore YRC dignity on his own by finishing in the pack. However, the biggest catastrophe of a catastrophic month had to be at Croft Park when the Hammer and the Hippo managed to get themselves in a three man break for one of the primes. In true Buster Keaton style they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by being worked over by a lone rider from Hambleton Road Club. Needless to say the Hammer and Hippo started to squabble like school children about who was to blame for the debacle, and if either of them had proficient bike handling skills they would have probably thrown their water bottles at each other. These lads need help.