Road: Roger does a Heinrich at Miners Rest

Updated with some factual corrections ...

Roger Bade pulled off a long sprint in the style of Australian (yes!) classics star Heinrich Haussler to take out the BSCC senior handicap at Miners Rest on Sunday July 11.  The finish was a thriller, with almost the entire field within sight of one another. 

The race, two laps of the Australian Masters Championships course at Miners Rest, was conducted in typical mid-winter conditions: a biting northerly wind, greasy roads, dense fog to start followed by pale sunshine. Bade, Don Stewart, the on-form Melissa Keirl, and big man Scott Denno, all starting 11:30 in front of scratch, combined well to collar the limit riders and hold off the rest of the field.  Behind them, the evenly-matched 5:30 bunch of Clive Silcock, Thane Turley, Aaron Blomeley, Stuart Brien and Jonathan Lacey started at a cracking pace, and combined with a larger group of front-markers, the 7:30 and 9-minute groups, at the start of the second lap.  The three bunches behind Silcock's also started fast, but once the catch was made, a juggernaut was formed that was not quite powerful enough to reel in the winners, but enough to hold off the combined backmarkers' bunch. Despite strong form from many of the twelve big guns behind Silcock, they needed a little more to catch the leaders.  The fact that scratchmen Andrew Weightman and Ciaran Conaughton both featured in two gut-busting open races last weekend - Hamilton and the state 100-km championship - probably made a difference. 

Coming in the Maryborough road on the second lap towards the finish, the front group shed Denno, and the chase group was down to Silcock, Turley, Lacey, Sam Edwards, Shane Butler, Craig Lightfoot, and young gun Lewis Piccoli.  A huge turn of pace from the steadily rising Lightfoot in the tailwind brought the chasers almost within striking distance of the leaders at the foot of the Blowhard rise, and so Clive Silcock, fresh off a storming 5th place at the brutal Cecil Shore Memorial 125-km handicap at Hamilton last weekend, shot across the gap solo.  Edwards and Turley, in particular, fought hard to drag Silcock back, but he had flown the coop, though not quite fast enough to get to the leaders.  In a nail-biting finish on the dead, slightly uphill drag to the line, Bade took off early, seemingly playing into the hands of power sprinter Stewart.  Stewart got to Bade's wheel but Bade somehow found enough to hold on, with Melissa Keirl a strong third.  Silcock was mere metres behind in fourth, with Lacey heartlessly exploiting the hard-chasing Turley and Edwards to snatch fifth another few metres back.  Fast finisher Lewis Piccoli got past Thurley for 7th, and Lightfoot and Butler filled out the top 10.  Damien Keirl led the back-markers across the line a short time later to take the fastest time and join his sister on the results board. 

This was the last race hit-out for many of the competitors before next Saturday's 100th Melbourne to Ballarat Classic handicap.  The results will depend on the judgment of the handicapper and the mood of the scratch bunch, but the Keirls, Sam Edwards, Clive Silcock and Shane Butler are solid early bets. 

Thanks to chief marshal Les Bilney, and marshals Ian Nunn (again!), Harry Bade, Jarrod Boyd, Shane Hayes, Scott Kramer and Sam McIntosh (standing in for her daughter Chloe). 

BSCC 50-km senior handicap at Miners Rest: results

1.  Roger Bade

2.  Don Stewart

3.  Melissa Keirl

4.  Clive Silcock

5.  Jonathan Lacey

6. Sam Edwards

7. Lewis Piccoli

8.  Thayne Turley

9.  Craig Lightfoot

10.  Shane Butler

Fastest time: Damien Keirl

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