Through and Off …the back and out of the race.

Race reports following the escapades of the Yorkies 3^rd and 4^th Cats

(and the 2^nd Cat too - to keep Near-Vet Saint happy)

Road Racers Prominent in the Press – Partial Team Success at Croft 28-04-04

Readers of Cycling Weekly couldn’t help but notice the prominence given to Yorkie riders the other week. I don’t mean the two page spread including Carl ‘Near-Vet’ Saint’s quotes about his 4^th place in the Rudy Project TT but rather mentions given to the club’s Road Race fraternity in the Results Section. Those of you who made the effort to hunt out a magnifying glass to read the 4 point font would have been rewarded by seeing mentions for Team Leader Woodrup’s victory at Bishopswood (no race report because I wasn’t there), Near-Vet Saint’s victory at Wetwang (see Race Report 8) and a glorious partial team success Russell Hepton (3^rd), Hippo Johnson (4^th) and Hammer Houghton (6^th) with a credible supporting role from Mike ‘aiming for 21’ Dixon at Croft Park. This wasn’t the first time that The Team had ridden together…..

Lance Armstrong always says that he wins Le Tour in the winter when he puts in the miles in all weathers. Like Lance, Yorkie road racers were putting in some gruelling winter miles of their own during the reliability rides. The Hippo particularly dislikes reliability rides because they have a habit of going over hills, so by the time the final reliability ride of the series came around The Hippo was resorting to underhand tactics to avoid the agony of the ride. When he thought that no-one was looking he sneaked off 10 minutes before the scheduled start but he found that he was not alone as some misfortunate renegades decided to go with him, including Hammer Houghton and Russell Hepton. Of course the Hippo’s plan backfired, as all good plans do, when he accidentally took them wrong way only to find that when they rejoined the correct route hundreds of 23mm tire tracks shimmered on the surface of the road as evidence that the main group of 50 plus riders were now ahead of them. Riding a reliability ride in a small group against a strong wind was not going to be fun, especially as there was still 55 mile to go and no hope of catching the main group. I can tell you The Hippo’s comrades were not happy campers…...

Rather than giving the Hippo a good kicking (which to be honest he deserved) Hammer Houghton and Russell Hepton decided to ride him into the ground (which wasn’t difficult). In fact the Hippo only managed one turn at the front over the next hour and once his 20 second turn finished they immediately dropped him knowing that he’d probably get lost like he did in the reliability ride last year….and he did.

Anyway, in an unusual twist of fate this shambles of a reliability ride laid the foundations for future team success and with three laps to go in the second Croft Park race of the season the three merry Yorkies found themselves thrown together in an 8 man breakaway racing towards the finish. And you’ve never seen teamwork like it….because there was none, or none that made any sense to me. As predicted Hepton and Hammer were trying to ditch The Hippo out of the 8 man group - no doubt a reprisal for the reliability ride debacle - and they succeeded. However, ‘aiming for 21 Dixon’ was having none this ditch your team mate routine and despite being lapped he managed to dig in deep to ride The Hippo back into the lead group. So as the wind up for the sprint began bets were being taken on the Yorkies either boxing each other in, bringing each other down, or climbing off and starting a fist fight amongst themselves. As it happened we all managed to get across the line safely because The Hippo couldn’t catch Hepton to box him in, the Hammer couldn’t catch The Hippo to knock him off and ‘aiming for 21 Dixon’ couldn’t catch the Hammer to start the fist fight. We’ll be back to try again next week……