THE Bathurst Cycling Club will do everything in its power to try and run the Rockley Cup at some stage in 2020 given the significance the trophy has to all members.
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The Rockley Cup - the hardest and most prestigious race on the BCC calendar - has been running for over 50 years, with club members all hungry to add the title to their racing resume.
The trophies have also been engraved in readiness; this was a big task with the new 50 year Anniversary Cup trophy engraved with an honour roll of the winners.
There is a couple of missing years where investigations are continuing - 1972 one of the years in question.
Early in the 1972 road season Sargent Wally Page stopped events on the Perthville Road with Bathurst Club moving racing to a number of other roads in the district after much discussion with the police.
The final race on the Vale Road was on the 10th of June and there is some suggestion that the club wanted to bring the Rockley Cup forward.
However on the day there was confusion with some riders taking the normal turn to Rockley and others racing the originally scheduled 20 mile event.
In the end Brian Grabham was declared the winner, defeating David Ryan and a young Steve Brilley, with Grabham also taking time in the 32 kilometre event when the backmarkers, which included the likes of Rob Stephen, Peter Turnbull, Geoff Ryan and Ray Davis, were declared lost during the race.
At this point in time it is difficult to assess whether this short event on the 10th June was the Rockley Cup or the formally scheduled event (believed to be on the 8th July 1972) which was won by Tony Owen.
Investigations into this are ongoing.
This year has been a real challenge with choking smoke from bush fires cancelling racing at the start of 2020 and then cycle racing - and all sport - stopped across the whole world in an to attempt to control Covid-19.
The club also had a holdup at the start of the 2020 road season as administrators worked to secure formal race permissions.
Surprisingly the club did get to run all its major track events for the summer of 2019/2020 and the road committee have held some events in 2020.
This is an indication of the work required by volunteer administrators to run a sports clubs these days. A modern day local sports club administrator has to keep aware of all issues and be prepared to act quickly.
At this point, the re-start of racing again in 2020 is difficult to predict with the sanctioning of all racing withdrawn.
Yet even when sanction becomes available again, the format of those first events would logically need to consider some controls on the spread of Covid19.
These considerations would include factors such as travel, social distancing and surface contamination.
Behind the scenes the Bathurst Cycling Club's administrators are still working and evaluating the situation and looking to be ready once racing is again permitted.
It's hoped the Rockley Cup can be the one event, above all, which can still go ahead by the end of 2020.
