RORAIMA Bikers Club’s (RBC) and Commonwealth Games bound Alonso Greaves had to fight hard from behind, before he was able to take the feature event which covered a distance of 15 laps around the outer circuit of the national Park, when the Guyana Cycling Federation (GCF) held its annual Cecil Anderson Memorial cycle road race yesterday morning.
When the cyclists including Greaves’ Commonwealth Games teammates Geron and Marlon ‘Fishy’ Williams (no relation), new National Park record holder Robin Persaud, Christopher Holder and Eric Sankar were sent on their way, it was Junior Niles who made the first move to go ahead and leave the peloton.
But he was wheeled in by the peloton, who failed to respond as Persaud and Sankar shot to front and held a 50 meters lead from the second lap, with Persaud taking two of the three sprint prizes and Sankar the other before they were connected with four laps to go by Greaves, Ryan Austin, Orville Hinds and Ian ‘Dumb Boy’ Jackson.
They stayed together, with Hinds taking the fourth sprint prize during the 12th lap of the race and at the sound of the bell lap, Greaves had positioned himself well amongst the six cyclists who were in the front of the peloton that included Niles, Leer Nunes and both Geron [who suffered a spill while in the front pack] and Marlon Williams respectively.
As was expected, Persaud, Austin, Hinds, Sankar and Jackson who finished in that order to occupy the top six positions behind Greaves, failed to prevent the RBC cyclist from sprinting home to take the first prize of a trophy and $10,000, along with the final sprint prize that was worth $1,000.
Persaud took home $8,000 and a trophy and a further $2,000 for claiming the two sprint prizes, while Austin took home $6,000 and a trophy, Hinds $5,000, Sankar $4,000 and Jackson $3,000, with Hinds and Sankar pocketing a further $1,000 each for their sprint prize win.
Christopher Holder got things started when he took home the junior’s five lap event and the $5,000 prize that came with it in a time of 31.40, ahead of Rastaff Oselmo ($3,000) and Paul De Nobrega ($2,000) respectively.
The veteran’s four laps event was won by Niles who covered the distance in a time of 29:34 to take home the $4,000 cash prize, with Kennard Lovell ($3,000) and Jackson ($2,000) rounding off the top three positions.
Shaquille Agard took the BMX Open $3,500 first prize after defeating Adrian Sharma ($3,000) and Randy Haynes ($2,000) in the race that covered a distance of three laps and was ran simultaneously with the veterans’ race.
Jude Bentley was made to stave off a strong finish from Richard Charles and Ozia MacAulay to take the mountain bike three laps event in a time of 19:43 seconds and the $3,500 cash prize, while Charles and MacAulay took home $3,000 and $2,000 respectively.
The GCF would like to thank the sponsors Kamal Seebarran and Jiffy Lubes, Marcus Fiedtkou and New York based Monty Davis along with the Guyana Police Force, for making the day’s activity a success.