Road: the 51st Fred Icke handicap

June 08 2010

Updated with junior report, and senior photos from Kate Grigg (see below). 

Chris Liston reports:

The 51st running of the Fred Icke senior open handicap race was accompanied, for the first time, by a junior handicap race.  Ballarat Sebastopol Ccycling Club was well represented.  Emily Wordie-Thompson gained a place on the podium by taking the First Woman trophy in the Junior U15 / U17 44.7 km handicap race.   The Icke is known as a hard rider's race, thanks to its tradition of being held in atrocious Ballarat winter conditions, and the trophy was a fitting win for the young lass from Gordon. Emily outsprinted clubmate and fellow member of the 8-minute bunch, Victoria Snibson, for the prize.  In temperatures that were in single figures, with fog to start and rain at the end, the race lived up to its reputation for the youngsters. The field did not come together as expected. Conor Dickson and Joshua Liston, the only under-fifteen riders in the fourteen minute group, crossed to the bunch that contained Wordie-Thompson, Snibson and Nicholas White at around the 30 km mark. This combined group was unable to reel in the outmarkers, who had disposed of Dominic Geoghegan early and forged on ahead. Holding onto third place was BSCC’s Patrick Cosgrave.  U15 Cosgrave, from the limit mark, stayed the course, chasing fellow limit rider, Brunswick's U17 Tyson Breen.  Breen put time into the chasing bunches and finished minutes clear.  Cosgrave held third after Ethen McMennimim from Bradford/Seymour overtook him within several hundred metres of the line.

Chasing from the rear, after starting 30 minutes behind limit, were Liam White, in the scratch bunch, and Hugo Tolliday and the in-form Angus Lyons from second scratch at 24 minutes. White clocked the second-fastest time, finishing on the wheel of Thomas Hamilton.
 

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BSCC was well represented in the senior race at the 51st Fred Icke open handicap race at Creswick on Saturday June 5.  Ben Clark crashed heavily at the finish.  He has a damaged AC joint in his left shoulder, and will have surgery, but is optimistic that he will make a full recovery. 

Updated: previously we missed Andrew Weightman's contributions to the winning 12-minute bunch.  Sorry Andrew!  Now corrected - read on. 

Twenty-five BSCC senior riders entered the race - a fair fraction of a total field of 180.  The third scratch bunch (12 minutes), with BSCC's Ciaran Conaughton and Andrew Weightman at the fore, ground its way through the field on the third lap.  Of the roughly 110 riders who started on 12 minutes or earlier, only about twenty were there to contest the finish.  As the exhausted riders wound up their sprint, in heavy rain, a rider touched a wheel with 150m to go, went down, and left Ben Clark with nowhere to go but over the top.  Ciaran avoided the carnage and finished sixth to take a well-deserved First Ballarat Rider trophy.  Shannon Gration, from 27 minutes (2nd limit), in his first open race, put in a superb ride to finish a metre behind Ciaran.  Andrew Weightman also avoided the chaos and finished in the front group after doing his lethal best in the last 10 km to crack the sprinters.  The combined scratch and second scratch bunches, including Pat Shaw, finished a few minutes further back and took the fastest time.

Before the race, as Melbourne riders looked shocked at the weather, Ballarat riders pointed out that these were the best conditions for the Fred Icke for several years.  The temperature briefly reached double figures, the precipitation was in liquid form - no sleet - and there are no reports so far of the wind knocking anyone over. 

The CSV handicappers organized the field into seven large groups, with gaps of five or seven minutes.  The limit group, featuring BSCC's Aaron Blomley, Melissa Keirl and Chloe McIntosh, was the exception: the smallest bunch, with a bigger gap of 9 minutes.  Behind them were the powerful 27 minute group, with Bob Braszell, Shane Butler, Ben Clark, Shannon Gration, Jason Haire, Clive Silcock and Charlie Stebbing.  Ben's bunch started steadily, remembered that the first ascent of Springmount was not the Plan de Corones time trial in the Giro, and worked well together.  At the start of the second lap they caught the limit group and took over the lead. 

In the 22-minute bunch were Jarrod Boyd, Jonathan Lacey and Charles Martin, along with most of the VIS women's road squad. This group did not work as cohesively as the group in front, but well enough to catch the two front groups on the second lap, and form a group with enough firepower to have a chance at dominating the race.  But on the third and final ascent of Springmount, the pace began surging, ejecting Charles - also in his first open road handicap - along with Shane, Jason, Charlie and Bob. 

Meanwhile, further back, the 17 minute bunch of Doug Garley, Stuart Grigg, Damien Keirl, John Polkinghorne and Scott Townsend was also running hot and cold.  They started very fast.  Garley had knee problems and dropped back on the frenzied charge towards Koroochiang.  Grigg hung tough, Polkinghorne worked relentlessly as always, and the in-form Townsend and Keirl made it look easy.  After bolting into Smeaton on the first lap, the bunch lost cohesion between Smeaton and Creswick, then inexplicably found it again on Springmount the second time, and blasted towards Blampied as if motorized.  Unfortunately Keirl had a mechanical problem near the top of Springmount, so found himself chasing the bunch solo.  In an amazing piece of determined riding, he got within reach of his bunch, when he realized that the 12-minute group was almost upon him, so he accepted the free ride back to his group. 

The 12-minute group, with Ciaran, James Crafter, Tony Mirabella and Andrew Weightman, and Shepparton's Stephen Fairless, arguably the strongest rider in Australia in the mid-1980s, chased like maniacs for the first lap, and sacrificed about half their riders in doing so, including Mirabella and Crafter (but not Weightman, as mistakenly reported earlier).  Crafter calmly slotted in with the monsters of second scratch, but Mirabella's race was done.  Despite the attrition, the momentum of the 12-minute bunch, with major contributions from Ciaran and Andrew, turned the tide of the race.  Out the front, the combined three groups were depleted when Chloe punctured and fell victim to race director Doug Armstrong's rigidly-enforced old-school rule against outside assistance.  The philosophy behind this rule is that either everyone in the race has spare wheels and feed stations, or nobody does.  At the Tour of Bright, everyone does; at the Fred Icke, nobody does.  The hot-and-cold 17-minute group was not gaining quickly on the big front group, until Ciaran and Andrew's group caught them.  The lift in pace was too much for Townsend, Keirl and Polkinghorne on the third and final ascent of Springmount.  They chased hard but did not make contact.  The Conaughton-Weightman juggernaut rolled on, and caught the front group and took over the lead near Smeaton on the third lap.  This left Ciaran, Andrew, Ben, Shannon and Clive from BSCC in the front group.  Pat Shaw and Rhys Gillett were among the drivers of the scratch group.  Fellow scratch rider Damien Turner, returning from injury, did his part for the first two laps and called it a day.  Scratch caught second scratch, including James and Doug, at Koroochiang on the second lap, to form a combined group of fewer than 20, from 40 starters. 

Before Ciaran and Andrew's group took the lead, the pace in the limit groups had become erratic, and the arrival of the exhausted but powerful middle markers made this even more the case.  On the last half-lap, scratch was gaining rapidly, but not rapidly enough.  Repeated surges at the front, especially Andrew's attacks, winnowed the numbers down, ejecting Clive, and kept the gap big enough.  The last few kilometers, in driving rain, became very tactical, with the unfortunate result of Ben's crash. 

In the scratch group, Rhys sacrificed himself on the last lap to bring the gap down, and lost contact outside Smeaton.  Pat finished with the fastest time group. 

The official story is on the Cycle Sport Victoria web site. 

Here are some photos from Kate Grigg.  Thanks Kate!

Ben Clark at the start

 

Chloe heads off

 

Stu Grigg and Damien Keirl

 

Stu looking relaxed

 

Tony Mirabella and James Crafter

 

Damien: gritty

 

 

Pat Shaw and Rhys Gillett driving the scratch bunch

 

Cold and wet

 

Pat Shaw almost home

 

Scott Townsend finishing

 

Pat Shaw debriefs after the race

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The handicaps for the 2010 Fred Icke open road race are now posted HERE, at Cycle Sport Victoria.  Check it out.  Observations:

Pat Shaw's wearing number 1.  He has Damien Turner and Rhys to keep him company in the scratch bunch.

Scott Townsend has been walloped by the handicapper for his wins the last two weeks. 

Doug "Hard Rider" Garley usually comes across a handicapper with a long memory.  Not so much this time - he'll do fine off 17 minutes.

Ben Clark, who recorded some jaw-dropping numbers in Brad Clark's tests at Ballarat Uni, is looking very good off 27 minutes.

Chloe McIntosh, off limit, has got to be a solid bet too.

See you out there!

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A handful of BSCC riders who know better are preparing themselves for the 51st Fred Icke open handicap race at Creswick on Saturday June 5.  Traditionally, this race is held on the coldest, bleakest day of the year.  It's 133 km, the longest race that many of the competitors will ride for the whole year.  Imagine the Collier, 5 degrees colder, 5 km/h faster, an hour longer, more climbing, fighting for the edge of the road the whole way, and the scratch bunch has a dozen riders almost as strong as Pat and Rhys.  This is what some of us do for fun. 

Entries close this Thursday, May 27, with Cycle Sport Victoria.

To read about last year's race, click HERE and HERE. 

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