THE city’s best riders on the velodrome will be gunning for glory in this Friday’s Bathurst Cycling Club Scratch Track Championships.
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Newly-elected club vice-president Damien Bennett is hopeful a sizeable field of riders will make their way to the Bathurst Cycle Park.
“We’ll likely see a lot of our regular club riders. There’s going to be A, B, C and D grades,” he said.
“In A grade Harry Carter will probably come and race. Brad Rayner has been riding well and Josh Corcoran could be here if he’s not doing any road racing.
“Harry’s got plenty of form with him and he might actually scare off a few riders. A lot of the top grade guys are endurance-focused riders so they’ll be keen so show that stamina off over the 30 laps they’ll be doing.”
Bennett is hopeful some of the riders who have recently ventured into track racing for the first time.
“The club has been focused on putting on events for new riders this year. We had our Chopfest races over winter to try and get people into track, and people were definitely keen to come back for more,” he said.
“We started that up to get people with road bikes to have a go on the track. We had some nights where we were getting over 25 people riding around in just two degrees.”
Beyond this Friday’s championships the club will be including a grade solely for riders bringing their road bike to the velodrome.
Meanwhile the club recently held its AGM.
Mark Simons was returned as club president while Bennett stepped up to the vice-president position.
Bennett’s move vacated the track coordinator role, now filled by Marian Renshaw.
The other Bathurst Cycling Club positions were filled by Elaine Ryan (secretary), Hayden Booth (treasurer), Glen Partridge (road coordinator), Tracey Robinson (junior coordinator), Scott Allen (MTB/CX coordinator) and Mark Windsor (bike park delegate).
The club has been focused on putting on events for new riders this year.
- Damien Bennett
“We had a really good meeting the other night. We got through a lot of items,” Bennett said.
“I went from the track role to vice-president and Marian was happy to again take that spot. Ryan O’Donnell stepped down from road coordinator and Glen’s taken over.
“We discussed a few initiatives and goals for the next year. One idea was to try and get a classic cycle race going on the track for the older bikes.
“We’ve always been interested in trying to get an event like this going. One of our committee members John Kitchen knows a few guys in Sydney who would be very interested in it.”
