Father and son duo Chris and Thomas Nicholson battle it out for line honours in A Grade at Brightwater finish, with Chris Sharland and Nick Batt taking 3rd and 4th in the 4 man breakaway.

Big group sprint in B Grade, with Scott Dayman taking line honours, Paul Michell 2nd and Garry Overend 3rd.

Over 80 riders turned out for the Mt.Heslington Circuit races, the biggest field for the series so far, perfect weather saw some great racing across all grades.

Results here

Only the 2 sprints have been photographed so no other shots this time on CyclingPhotos.co.nz.

Benchmark "Hell of the South" Aquados Tour, Sunday 15th August.

The next round in the Benchmark Series is the Aquados Tour, on Sunday 15 August, check out the pictures from the 2008 Tour of Aquados, click onto the Hell of the South here

National Points Series

The 2010 RaboPlus National Points Series kick off again after a short winter break with the Hudson Gavin Martin Auckland 1000.

Info on the National Points Series (NPS) from BikeNZ.

Also info on the Secondary Schools Road Nats.

Nathan Dahlberg gets a Tour de France mention from Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen

If you have stage 13 recorded it is at about 60.8km to go that Nathan's last minute callup for the Tour de France is mentioned.

Apparently, Nathan was shopping in Belgium and his wife told him "er, you had better stop that and get packing, you have got to ride the Tour de France tomorrow"

That quote might not be entirely accurate but you get the idea....

Article in the Nelson Mail about Kristoff Ford, Thomas Ashley, Tom Nicholson and Tom Hodgson. Nelson Mail - Young wheelers on a roll

Thomas Hodgson report from Canberra

Well here is my little blog on the racing with the NZ U19 Team, in the Junior Tour of Canberra.

The first day was a 23 km ITT. That was good; Dillon and I were the only guys who used our road bikes and not specific time trial bikes. I placed 12th and Thomas Ashley was a further 6 seconds behind.
The funny thing is though, during the Time Trial I actually passed around 11 riders ( all with disc wheels and expensive bikes), but that was all good, until one rider decided he was going to sit on my wheel, and then pass me when he felt recovered from my slipstream. So I got angry and told him to get off my wheel, which upset my rhythm. Fortunately for me, the course was very hilly so I could ride the big guy of my wheel, and that was Mitchell Lovelock who took out the time trial with an impressive time of 32:28.
The next day was about a 53km road race, and a 45 minute criterium, later in the day. I
decided I would take a shot at the KOM; the first one hit me hard, about 9 km into the stage.

 I had brick legs and just held off for 5th (Only the first 4 rider’s collect points) we weren’t as organized as we could have been though. This stage was all a big hit for some of us, as it was the first race ever to take part in out of New Zealand, and I was a little nervous. All in all it went average and I got some results in the KOM’s.
Straight after we went back to the AIS for lunch and also we received a massive lecture from our coach Ken Bewley (father of Sam Bewley, the young kiwi rider in Lance Armstrong’s Radioshack Pro Tour team) he basically told us we need to start taking control of things and he was absolutely right. So a couple of hours later, we hit the criterium. It was off the chain! My legs were feeling great, so I went from the gun, and made some attacks off the front to get the Aussies to work in order to help either Thomas Ashley or Dillon Bennett who both had a better chance of winning a sprinters criterium than I did.

 There were also two big crashes that I was very fortunate not to get involved in, unfortunately Paddy was not so lucky, but he wasn’t too badly knocked up. Ken was happier with our performances in the criterium, but we still had something to prove the next day.

 The last day of racing featured a 106 km road race, with 6 KOM’s up for grabs. That
one day of racing was by far the most incredible day of racing in my entire life. Just like
Ken said we would, we all rode into this tour on the last day, and it was great! Here’s how it went - I was riding with both my head and legs screwed on, as there is a KOM 9k into the stage. I went right from the gun and it worked out beautifully, we formed a breakaway group of around 6 riders of which 3 of the guys were in my team. Paddy, Denay and I took control and I overpowered them and the Aussies to collect maximum points. The break soon lost momentum and the bunch caught us. When we were caught it was great to see our whole team on the front in total control of the bunch. I then ended up taking the majority of the points and with 15km to go Dillon Bennett attacked with 2 other Australian riders with him. As soon as that happened, our whole team
got into the third wheel from the front and stopped contributing to the pace making.

They didn’t like it one bit; there was a lot of abuse going on! But my team mates
did it for me when I was up the road, so now it was my turn. After some abuse, angry looks and foul language Dillon had nearly taken out the stage, but got 2nd, which is a
solid effort considering that stage was the Australian ACT championships. That day of racing was so incredible, because we took control from the start till the end of
the race. We had it sorted, and that is something I’ve never experienced before in my time in racing. All in all, I am very happy with the experience and my results, I ended up getting 1st equal in the KOM classification and 8th overall. But unfortunately I didn’t receive the polka dot jersey or prize money because the guy I tied on points with, Jackson Law, was higher up than me on the GC which meant it was given to him. So I was a little bit gutted, because the polka dot jersey was what I really wanted. A bloody good experience though.

Thanks to Avanti plus Nelson for maintaining my bike and giving it an awesome full service to make it run nice and smooth before the trip and Mitchell for lending me his wheels.

Cheers

Hodge

Daniel Ellison at the South Island Sec. School Champs, results

The South Island Secondary school champs held at Ruapuna raceway in Christchurch over the weekend, Daniel sprinted down the outside to come 2nd in the Under 17 boys race. 

French anti-doping agency are not happy about being excluded from this years Tour de France

This year the UCI will conduct tests overseen by WADA. Read the full story on the BBC website.

Cyclewear: Get into the right gear

Article from the NZ Herald. Not your usual Lycra or even merino clothing but well worth a read and check the links at the bottom of the page - click for link to NZ Herald story.

Britta Martin French Ironman Story

Nelson Mail story covering a great performance by club member Britta Martin.

88 Valley Winter Series Race, results here

Photos - David Letsche - 55 photo are available to view on CyclingPhotos.co.nz.

What did you say Carl ???

D Grade exits Wakefield

David Ayre and Thomas Hodgson lead the chase bunch up 88 Valley Rd.

Big sprint for the 1st place in B Grade, Daniel Ellison U17 (R) wins from Layton Murdoch U17.

Nelson Cycle Festival, 8th - 17th October 2010

The Nelson Cycle Festival website (www.NelsonCycleFest.co.nz) has all the details on the road, tandem, MTB, BMX and social rides that will be happening in October. There are some amazing circuits including city centre criteriums and racing along a closed Rocks Rd.

A page dedicated to this landmark local event has been setup on this website and will be updated in the run up to the cycle festival. Tasman Wheelers - Nelson Cycle Festival page.

CYCLE 'INCIDENT' REPORTING HOT LINE

PHONE 0800 CYCLE CRASH OR 0800 292 532. CALLS ARE MONITORED BY MARGARET PARFITT TRANSPORT AND SAFETY CO-ORDINATOR, NELSON CITY COUNCIL, TO TAKE A PROSECUTION FILL OUT TRAFFIC INCIDENT FORM SUPPLIED BY NZ POLICE.

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PO Box 3361
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Phone/Fax 03 544 5053
email malcolm@tasmanwheelers.co.nz