Dromara CC put on a top class show for Irish CX Nationals #irishcxnats

by Rich · January 11, 2016

Where to start! What a weekend for Dromara CC and the sport of Cyclocross. At Dromara CC we don’t like things too easy so when our original venue was unable to be used we were very lucky to secure Tollymore at the last minute.

Over Friday and Saturday a crack setup team took over and created a fabulous course (if we do say so ourselves). 75 Barriers, hundreds of posts and plenty of tape was used by our volunteers to mark the vast course. All setup just in time for practice to open at 2pm on the Saturday.

That left the final setup on Sunday morning so another super batch of volunteers came early to put the banners up and finishing gantry up.

Bring in the strong men

First up was the Sign on and with Lisa at the helm the first wave of competitors got their numbers and timing chips. She handed over to Eddie Doyle and his team who brilliantly covered sign on until it closed.

At 10am it was time to grid the juniors, ladies and M50’s. Dromara CC had representatives in all races – Peter Davison proving that just because you have two punctures doesn’t mean you cannot bunny hop the log.

Bottoms Up

Diane Wilson has been slowly giving this CX a go and since she was very good all year it seems Santa saw fit to deliver her a CX bike fit for a princess. The ladies race was the most competitive for years with 23 taking to the start line. The race was won by Beth McCluskey as she dominated the whole race with some superb riding. In such an elite field Diane didnt have the best grid position and was well down after the first lap but worked her way through the field to take a very credible 6th Place – who knows what would have happened if she had a better grid position.

Beth McCluskey leading the way

Diane working through the field on her way to an awesome 6th place

In the M50 race the Dromara Elite Vet team were on the start line – Paul Watson (17th), Paul Mawhirt (20th), Stephen Nugent (24th), Mike Barton (25th) & Robert Davison (28th). Des Woods took the victory but the Dromara quintet showed there is still more to come with these excellent results.

Stephen Nugent giving a battling performance to take 24th place

The next race up was the M40 and with Robin Seymour taking to the start line the opportunity to win this was some what reduced. Brian Wilson and Richard Cowan lined up in this elite field and between the two of them it was Brian who would win this battle due to his high quality pit team giving him a clean bike and clean pair of heels. Robin Seymour proved what an awesome rider he is to comfortably win another Irish National CX jersey.

Roger takes the title

The final race of the day saw the Senior Men take to the line with Dromara team of Barry Kellett, Nathan Mullan & Graham Smyth going toe to toe with probably the strongest field there has ever been at a Championship. The talk at the start of this race was always about David Montgomery and Roger Aiken – who would be the strongest. Should either of them make a mistake there were a collection of very fast men behind ready to pounce. With David Montgomery poorly gridded he had to work hard for the first few laps to get on the tail of Roger but two laps to go Roger but in a spurt that would see a ten second gap grow to almost a minute as Roger Aiken became the 2016 Irish National CycloCross Champion.

Nathan enjoying the muck

Behind Roger came David Montgomery looking very disappointed but producing a super display of racing. Glen Kinning recovered from wardrobe malfunctions and punctures to claim the third place on the podium.

Barry on his way to 9th place

Barry Kellett made sure his pit team were worked hard as he produced an awesome performance to take 9th place. Nathan “I’m really a roadie” Mullan has taken to this cyclocross like a duck to water and dug deep to take 29th with Graham Smyth taking 36th to complete an super Team Dromara display.

Graham completing the team

With the dust settling on a tremendous and very well supported Irish National CX Championships the clean up team moved in to remove all that tape, posts and barriers so it looks like we were never there.

We cannot finish this report without giving a shout out to all the people that made this race possible as well as Killinchy CC & Shimna CC who provided marshals and setup helpers. So from Zak Hanna falling of his seat to amuse the other marshals to Jack Ferguson marshalling from 9am on Sunday to Lisa for getting the professional looking flowers ready to Brian Wilson/Paul Mawhirt proving there is no problem they couldn’t solve to Pit crews that worked so hard for the Dromara team members to Martin Grimley who put his heart and soul into this great event. I could try and name everyone but I would only miss someone out but really if you marshalled, help put the tape out, helped at sign on, competed or promoted the event then YOU made the difference. A great day for the club and brilliant way to end the CycloCross season.