Gyde retains cycling title

Press, 1 June 1981, Page 4

Gyde retains cycling title

Terry Gyde unleashed by far his best sprinting form of the season to retain his New Zealand professional 40km cycling championshp in the middle of a full week-end \.of cycling at Greymouth yesterday. . Gyde won the title, in 64min 48s, in torrential rain at the end of a course along the Coast road to Punakaiki and return from a full line-up of New Zealand’s top sprinters. • ; He beat , into the minor placings the two most fancied contenders, Russell Nant and Wayne Hillary, and they were followed home'by four other outstanding sprinters. Kevin Tait. John Reid, John Cleary and Brian Stokes. Then came the first juniors, Tony Ward — he thrived on the run all the way — and Bevan Gyde. The first of’the veterans was Willie Stevenson, with the bunch, and Ray Craig, who was about 3min. behind the bunch. The race was not without incident. Nant breaking a chain but getting back on immediately with Colin Bryant’s bike, while Greg Cox, one of the higherrated juniors, had a nasty crash. There were big breakaway efforts from Steve Doherty and Nant, while towards the finish,

Terry Gyde. Hillarv. Stokes and Paul Hoskin also worked their wav clear.

Saturday’s West Coast open 40km championship was won as expected by the front markers and, indeed, the scratch riders would have had to break Cleary’s race record by Dimin. to go .through the field.

Peter Roberts (Grevmouth). Bob Jones (Otago), and Danny Atkinson (Greymouth) were the 12min markers who got to Kumara first from Jacksons, in a time of 62min 355.

They were followed home by Mark'Woodford (Otago, Peter Coward (Otago, 6timin) and Frank Paviell (Christchurch, 6‘imin).

Dohertv won the fastest time in 52min 18s, heading off Cleary and Nant by 5s when he slipped the bunch in the last 2km. Of the rest Terry Gyde. Hillary and Tait were run off the road by a car while Hoskin and Stokes also suffered from a careless road user.

Ward (53:24) and Bevan Gyde (55:53) won the junior time honours, while Stevenson (56:55) gave a taste of things to come by beating Craig for veteran s time by a minute.