This year’s Club Hill Climb Championship was held on Thursday 8th August in dry but not the most favourable conditions. That did not prevent junior rider, Ethan Derrick, giving a super performance and finally cracking senior rider, Paul Harries to become 2014 Club Hill Climb Champion by 21 seconds.
Eight Club riders and two guests faced starter, Carole Dietman before racing to the top of the Bwlch where they were pleased to see Gwyn Humphreys back in his traditional role of finish timekeeper.
Tony Rees [ finish time 15mins 48 secs] was first rider to challenge the mountain but 16 year old Kyle Adams, riding his first hill climb, soon had him in his sights on the long straight after the cattle grid. He relentlessly closed the gap to overhaul Tony and cross the line first with a ride that eventually gave him equal 4th place with experienced competitor Jason Dodd in a time of 14.20. Ethan [12.40 ] starting at number 5 caught and passed his minute man, Dean Cummings [14.28] while number 6, Paul Harries, battled to hold off Tony Derrick [13.26] who valiantly fought his way to 3rd place on the podium. Simon Kinsey kept himself away from the action until last week but made a great effort up the tough climb to finish in 19.05. Times and current overall positions for the hill climb and time-trial series may be found in the results section.
There has been a flurry of activity in recent months. In early July, Simon Iles rode to 16th then 10th places in the Forza Cycles RT criterium series. On 17th July, Steve Bennett, riding in the first of the Cardiff JIF Summer Criteriums took 1st place in the 2/3/4/vets category event to add another 10 points to his 3rd Cat licence. He followed this up in the second race of the series on 24th July with a 2nd place and Simon just behind in 6th. Steve had now accumulated enough points to be upgraded to 2nd Category. As a result he was invited to ride as a composite team with Matt Beckett and Adam King of Cardiff JIF in the 2 day L’Etape de la Defonce stage race in the Vale of Glamorgan. Day one,20th July, began with a team time trial and they took 3rd place out of 18 teams. Then in stage 1a, Steve took 12th place in a field of 69 riders. Dat two saw Steve take 18th place, which was good enough to place 9th overall out of 55 finishers. He was also 5th Welsh rider. Well done Steve, we all recognise you as a classy rider.
Our younger members have also been mixing it in circuit races with Ethan taking 13th spot in the Under 16’s at the Wales Open Criterium Youth Support Races on 12th July. His cousins Evan and Freddie Rickards have been competing in the Celtic Criterium Series where Freddie gained 4th place in the under 8 age group in round 2. Evan, unfortunately, has been temporarily sidelined by a knee injury following a fall.
Our club jerseys were well to the fore in the 4th cat. race at Llandow on 7th August when Dai Long gained another three points for his 7th place and Hywel Morgan one point for 10th. Steve Williams missed out on the points following a mistake at the last chicane but finished strongly in 14th place.
Dan Taylor was the sole Acme representative in the Cardiff 100 miles RCC 50 mile Time Trial on the Abergavenny/ Monmouth course last weekend. In his first ever ’50’ and in very wet conditions he recorded a creditable 2.03.59 for 23rd place and set the fastest club 50 time this year. This Sunday he rides the Welsh Championship 100 in the same area and is joined by Gary Flower who has recorded very good times at all distances in this, his first season.
