Casey Cycling Festival 2010 Review

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Community team Tru Blu Racing have taken line honours in the Casey Cycling Festival again, beating Ex-Pats by a lap and a half on the weekend.

Tru Blu hails from nearby Mornington, they train on the circuit regularly and have now won every Casey event they've contested. Despite the closeness of the final margin, they never really looked like losing, although that didn't stop four strong teams putting up a great fight.

Shorter track, slower speeds?

The new shorter configuration slowed down race speeds as the slowest corner was followed by an uphill slog. Primary school teams in particular, found this one really hard going.

"It (the new configuration) threw me all out of sync because my pace markers were gone," Tru Blu rider, Steele Von Hoff explained. "On the full course I know where I'm supposed to be at the 50 second mark, 1 minute and a half and so on. Here, we're doing a shorter lap in 2:10 when I can ride the full course in 2:20."

The dreaded new hairpin only caught out a couple of riders throughout the six hour, as caution and clean racing was the order of the day.

How the race unfolded

Tru Blu leapt away from the flag with a blistering first lap which was the fastest of the race. Their final lap time of 1:47 seconds is an average speed of over 54 km/h! Their new minimalist paint scheme seemed to be doing the job as Deakin Uni's Phantom, Trisled's Son of Tiger, Ex-Pat's Bella and new-comers Strathdale Racing formed a chasing quartet.

Bendigo Youth Racing's Troy Hutchins started off in Bella for Ex-Pats and enjoyed himself despite 'not having done enough endurance' training. Later in the race they were very quick and even have some video to show they were in hunt against Tru Blu. The whole team rode strongly, especially Ty who had a ankle brace on from a recent work injury!

Current RACV EB HPV lap record holder, Russell Nankervis, rode a great debut stint for Strathdale too (below left). He weaved from the back of the grid to be with the leaders. Unfortunately, his screens started to fog after 20 minutes and really took the edge off.

Meanwhile, Trisled raced 'sans-transponder' for their first stint, but as the timekeepers kept a close watch they were able to be patched back into the results sheets pretty easily.

Trisled chief Ben Goodall reflected later that they 'hadn't brought their A-Game, but that they had a loss now out of the way they could get on with the season.'
Their new rig was on display out behind their pits and turned plenty of heads all day.

 

 

Deakin were running in second place for the early stages of the race, having modified their door from their last outing in Murray Bridge last September. Their speed was great at times.

Always pack the coat for Casey

Despite early forecasts of 33', which were later revised to 25' with possible showers, overcast skies threatened but rain didn't fall during the race. The organisers did have some great tales of lighting hitting the adjacent rugby field while they were setting up at 6am though!

Elsewhere...

St Margaret's School & Berwick Grammar entered a whopping nine entries - that's one sixth of the field! The cleaned up the Community Veterans category and the All Female class too. They seemed to survive without their tenacious leader Terry Trevena, who'd be hospitalised after an achilles operation earlier that week.

Wonthaggi sparked up a new inter-town rivalry between their school team (yes, they're called the Wizards) and a new Community team called Terzo Racing. Despite being in different classes, I imagine they'll pick up where they left off when the racing heads to their home town in a few weeks.

Woodleigh were the first school team across the line and were again very consistent and clean. They won the Senior Secondary class.

Weeroona College were a fair way back from Woodleigh in second place in the Senior Secondary category with their evergreen silver bullet. Their support crew continues to grow in a healthy way as they combine forces with relative newcomers Crusoe College.

Lloyd St Primary had the lucky number 13 number panel and lead the Year 6 Primary School division from flag to flag, but eventual Year 5 winners Tooradin tusselled with St Marg's and Beaconsfield all the way.

Wrapping Up

Self confessed HPV-nut, Mark Fidone, had the honour of waving the chequered flag.

As always, the Casey Cycling Festival is a great testing ground for teams who want to ease new students into race conditions.

Next up the HPV Circuit heads to Bendigo International Madison for the Bendigo Bank / Cartridge World HPV Challenge (March 6&7) and then to Wonthaggi (March 19-21)

Links:

Visit the Casey Cardinia HPV & Cycling Club Website at http://www.cchpvcc.org.au

View more photos from this event, and others events, on the Ex-Pats Racing website

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Video's

Terzo Racing's Video:

Ex-Pats' Video: