Archived News
  2008
     August
Cyclists Tour the North
07.08.08
With most weekends lately proving to be cold and windy, Saturday's weather turned out perfectly for the annual tour of the north bike race held at Port Pirie a fortnight ago.
With fine cool conditions, good prize money and the hype from the tour de France it managed to motivate a good turn out of Senior and Junior riders from Adelaide, Whyalla and Port Pirie.
While Adelaide drew the largest number of senior riders, respectively some of the best riders in the state and country, this combined with short handicapping, the Whyalla and Port Pirie riders were always going to have their work cut out for them.
The senior race of ninety kilometers started at Port Pirie, and headed out long the Port Broughton road turning uphill to Clements gap for eights kilometers, before turning around and heading back along the same route to the finish.
The race consisted of approx forty four riders divided into eight groups from limit to scratch.
The Whyalla contenders were Adrian Wilson at 21mins, Steve Brown, Nick Hellowell, Kelvin Rolach 17mins,Mark Hellowell 14mins, Paul Berkett 11mins and Malcolm Clasolm 4 mins .
From the word go the race was at a fast pace with all groups working well within themselves to try to hold off the others ,but with the short handicapping this was going to be tough ,the group at 11min was the first to be caught at the 25km mark by Paul Berketts group.
With the turn to Clements gap and the hill ahead Paul Berkett made a break bridging the gap to the 17min group, his break away caused his group to split and Mark Hallowell falling of the pace for a lonely ride home.
By this time the scratch bunch had caught the 4min group containing Malcolm Clasolm, and the hill was about to split the whole race due to the scratch group catching nearly everybody, with constant attacks from the younger riders on Malcolm he couldn't hold on and fell of the pace, it was now for him just a training ride.
By the half way mark the group containing Adrian Wilson had done well to hold of the rest but this was short lived as the scratch group swallowed them up, and with the return hill climb the groups had split and the riders were strung out along the road.
By the turn onto Port Broughton road a group of about 10 including Paul Berkett and the scratch bunch were in the lead leaving the rest to fight it out for some sort off order.
With a tail wind the pace was high and at 10kms to the finish line the scratch bunch attacked the group ,with Paul Berkett having nothing left in his legs he failed to match the attack and fell off the pace.
This left the remaining riders for a exciting sprint finish which was taken out by Adelaide rider Matt Benson taking line honors and fastest time of 2hours 38 mins ,he collected seven hundred dollars prize money it made his day worth while, and at nineteen this rider will be one to watch for the future.
With prize money paying to 10th Paul Berkett managed to be the best placed Whyalla rider at 7th.
Nick Hellowell 16th, Kelvin Rolach 17th, Adrian Wilson 18th also had a good rides followed by, Malcolm Clasolm 39th, Steve Brown 35th and Mark Hellowell 36th .