Big cyclocross race hosted by Dromara

Big cyclocross race hosted by Dromara

13 January 2016

WHAT a weekend it was for members of Dromara Cycling Club who hosted the 2016 Irish National Cyclocross Championships.

Things didn’t start out that well as the original venue was ruled out, but organisers were fortunate to secure Tollymore Forest at the last minute.

Over Friday and Saturday a crack set-up team took over and created a fabulous course. Seventy-five barriers, hundreds of posts and plenty of tape was used by volunteers to mark the vast course. All set up just in time for practice to open at 2pm on the Saturday.

That left the final set-up on Sunday morning so another super batch of volunteers came early to put the banners up and finishing gantry up.

First up was the sign on and with Lisa at the helm the first wave of competitors got their numbers and timing chips. She handed over to Eddie Doyle and his team who brilliantly covered sign on until it closed.

At 10am it was time to grid the juniors, ladies and M50s. Dromara CC had representatives in all races, Peter Davison proving that just because you have two punctures doesn’t mean you can’t bunny hop the log.

Diane Wilson has been slowly giving cyclocross a go this season and since she was very good all year, it seems Santa saw fit to deliver her a cyclocross bike fit for a princess. 

The ladies’ race was the most competitive for years with 23 taking to the start line. The race was won by Beth McCluskey as she dominated the whole race with some superb riding. 

In such an elite field Diane didn’t have the best grid position and was well down after the first lap, but worked her way through the field to take a very credible sixth place.

Who knows what would have happened if she had a better grid position.

In the M50 race the Dromara Elite Veterans team of Paul Watson (17th), Paul Mawhirt (20th), Stephen Nugent (24th), Mike Barton (25th) and Robert Davison (28th) were on the start line. 

Des Woods took the victory, but the Dromara quintet showed there is still more to come with these excellent results.

The next race up was the M40 and with Robin Seymour taking to the start line the opportunity to win this was some what reduced. Brian Wilson and Richard Cowan lined up in this elite field and between the two of them it was Brian who would win this battle due to his high quality pit team giving him a clean bike and clean pair of heels. 

Robin Seymour proved what an awesome rider he is to comfortably win another Irish National CX jersey.

The final race of the day saw the senior men take to the line with the Dromara team of Barry Kellett, Nathan Mullan and Graham Smyth going toe to toe with probably the strongest field there has ever been at a championship. 

The talk at the start of this race was always about David Montgomery and Roger Aiken. Who would be the strongest? Should either of them make a mistake there were a collection of very fast men behind ready to pounce. 

With Montgomery poorly gridded, he had to work hard for the first few laps to get on the tail of Aiken, but two laps to go Roger put in a spurt that would see a ten second gap grow to almost a minute as Aiken became the 2016 Irish National CycloCross Champion.

Behind Roger came David Montgomery looking very disappointed, but producing a super display of racing. Glen Kinning recovered from wardrobe malfunctions and punctures to claim the third place on the podium.

Kellett made sure his pit team were worked hard as he produced an awesome performance to take ninth place. Nathan Mullan has taken to this cyclocross like a duck to water and dug deep to take 29th with Graham Smyth taking 36th to complete a super Team Dromara display.

With the dust settling on a tremendous and very well supported Irish National CX Championships the clean up team moved in to remove all that tape, posts and barriers so it looks like we were never there.

The club would like to thank all the people that made this race possible as well as Killinchy CC and Shimna CC who provided marshals and set-up helpers. 

From Zak Hanna falling off his seat to amuse the other marshals, to Jack Ferguson marshalling from 9am on Sunday, to Lisa for getting the professional looking flowers ready, to Brian Wilson/Paul Mawhirt proving there is no problem they couldn’t solve, to Pit crews that worked so hard for the Dromara team members, to Martin Grimley who put his heart and soul into this great event.  

As it would be impossible to name everyone, but if you marshalled, helped put the tape out, helped at sign on, competed or promoted the event then you made the difference. A great day for the club and brilliant way to end the cyclocross season.