After a tough three days of competition in the Canberra Women’s and Junior Tour, Watts ranked second in the under 19 women’s general classification.

She finished four minutes and 12 seconds down on victor Chloe Heffernan from the Illawarra Cycling Club.

“It was a really good weekend and I was really happy with it,” she said.

Watts’ campaign began with a time trial on Friday in which she placed second to Heffernan, before going on to finish fifth in the criterium and fourth in the kermesse.

“I stuffed up my last lap in the kermesse, my positioning was just terrible. I got position on every other lap and I was thinking ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’,” she said.

“For the TT I sort of just went out and did that as hard as I could. Backing up for the crit and kermesse wasn’t too bad because they were shorter, flatter races.”

Those results meant Watts sat second in the general classification heading into the final stage 90 kilometre road race, but with time bonuses offered to the top finishers, she was not assured of a podium.

It meant she needed another strong result and riding in a field that also included the women’s A and B grade hopefuls, Watts’ legs were certainly tested.

“As soon as I got onto the road race and hit that first hill my legs were like ‘Oh, really?’. My legs were just buggered and I thought it was going to be the worst 90 kays,” she said.

“The course was fairly testing, but with the Queen of the Mountains [classification] we’d like sprint over those climbs then the pace would slow down.

“That made the first half of the race a little bit easier, but for the second half it was just breakaways.

“What happened was we had to do two u-turns. There was a breakaway just before the first turn around and I just missed that, then ended up gapping back to the group with another rider.

“So I was back onto the breakaway. Then we did the second u-turn and there was breakaway after breakaway after breakaway, everyone was just hitting it really hard.

“After one of the hills I didn’t have it in me and I got dropped. Luckily I was with three other riders and we just rode tempo.”

Heffernan pulled away in the final 3km to win, Watts claiming second as she finished 2:53 later.

Watts was not the only Bathurst cyclist to impress in Canberra, with four other riders finishing in the general classification’s top 10.

Laura Renshaw was 10^th in women’s B grade, Josh Corcoran sixth in the under 19 men’s, Luke Tuckwell 10^th in the under 15 boys and Kalinda Robinson seventh in the under 15 girls tour.