The Bathurst men’s masters 150+ team of Richard Hobson, Dennis Martin, Mark Windsor and Jeremy Ryan were too classy for their rivals over the 40 kilometre course.

The winning quartert were the only team in their division to break the magic hour mark, completing the circuit in 59 minutes and 17 seconds.

Randwick Botany Cycling Club (1:00:50) and Illawarra Cycling Club (1:01:26) filled out the podium.

It was almost a podium double up for the Bathurst club in the team time trials.

Bathurst’s men’s masters 180+ team featuring Jim Lavis, David Reece, Graham Stait and Robert Stephen narrowly missed out on a top three finish in their division by three seconds.

Hobson had a good feeling about the team’s top three chances and was thrilled to land on the top step of the podium.

“I was quietly confident but Mark was pleasantly surprised because he knew a few riders in other teams and thought it could be tough,” he said. 

“I’m blissfully unaware of all that stuff so I went in thinking that we had a pretty good team and it was going to take someone very good to beat us.

“We were all spent by the end of it. We all rode to our potential and had nothing left.”

Signs were promising for Bathurst when they overtook several others teams on their way down the course – with each group having started two minutes apart.

The Bathurst team rotated well at the front over the course of the race.

“Our youngest member, Jeremy, was our strongest rider, no doubt about that,” Hobson said.

“He ramped it up on the way out there, which is key on that course because it’s a long drag uphill to the turnaround. 

“Usually when you get to that turnaround you’ve got a tailwind to the finish but that wasn’t the case this year so his effort on the way out was fairly important for us.”

Great results continued to come Bathurst’s way in the following day’s Ride 4 Robbie Graded Scratch Races.

Brad Rayner scored a top 10 finish in a classy division one affair.

Fresh off his excellent masters ride a day earlier Ryan was back at it during the scratch races with a third place in a division two sprint finish.

Daniel Went won a mass sprint finish for the division four crown, beating a sizeable bunch of 16 other riders at the line to take the top prize.

Former Bathurst club cyclist and current Sydney Uni Velo Club rider Emily Watts finished second in the open women’s race, a day after taking out the elite women’s team time trial with Abby Sneddon and Georgia Whitehouse.

Whitehouse beat Watts to the scratch race honours.

Watts’ Sydney Uni Velo Club won the overall championship with Bathurst slipping to 12th overall after a number of top five performances in the last decade, including a second place in 2014.

Bathurst were runners-up to Illawarra Cycling Club in the Top Country Cycling Club for 2018.