Easter Monday saw two of Griffith’s Bicisport riders travel to Sydney to contest the Eric Mather Cup at the Sydney Dragway circuit. The event is a masters graded scratch race format where Melissa and Peter Budd were going up against some strong opposition.
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Melissa was out of her comfort zone racing in this event for the first time. Graded into Division 4 with 29 other riders and only a handful of women.
Melissa’s race was a 50 minutes plus one lap distance and the pace was fast on the smooth raceway circuit. Knowing she needed to keep in a good position in the first half of the field was no easy task for Melissa but she took up the challenge.
A training fall over Easter though took its toll as the race wore on and Melissa pulled the pin with just over a lap to go knowing she wasn’t going to be able to sprint.
Asked how her ride went Melissa said, “ That type of racing is so much fun. It’s really hard work and you have to always be thinking. It was also really good to be racing in a bunch of 30 riders but a little nervy at times when you have riders all around you.”
Peter Budd was racing in the Division 2 race that was held over 70 minutes plus one lap. Division 2 was the largest field on the day with 79 riders. This made for some exciting racing and put a premium on positioning in the peloton.
The race was very fast limiting any break away attempts and going in to the final lap it was looking like a bunch sprint, normally one of Budd’s strengths.
Going into the technical corner section however Budd erred and was caught out, losing some position. Going around the corners in around 20th place left Budd with lots of ground to make up before the sprint.
Moving up through the field with less than a kilometer to the line hurts the legs and as the sprint opened up Budd had already put in too much effort. He flew across the line around 10 metres behind the winner in 14th place out of the 79 rider field.
After the race Budd said “ Yeah I blew it on the last lap. You really can’t make a mistake like that. I was pushed too far back and burnt my legs moving up. A super fun race though. A big peloton, hard and fast.”
When asked will he make that mistake again Budd said, “ You can always make mistakes but the more races you do the more race focused you become. It’s just a pity in the country areas we have to travel to Sydney to get this type of racing.”
Both BiciSport riders were joined by clubmate Frank Signor in contesting Round 3 of the Tour de Riverina on Saturday. The event hosted by the Cobram-Barooga Cycle Club was a 50km handicap with a BiciSport race report to come.
