Simon Daw wins KVA Design Autumn Sash Race

24th May 2015. A brisk morning was welcomed by another strong feild of 44 riders at the Paraparap manor for the 2015 KVA Design Autumn Sash Race. 59km.
80+ year old Brian Long was the lone limit rider with a 40 minute gap back to a strong scratch group of Rick Buckwell, Paul Beretta, Andrew Baker, Jeff Miller, Dave Warren and Andrew Goodwin.
The 11.30 minute group of nine riders looked quite strong on paper if they worked well together on the road.
Brian was holding a good pace and cadence when he got back to the club rooms after completing the Blackgate rd leg of the race with the last three groups still to start.
The scratch group had started very well making up some good time on second scratch group which started inconsistently with three new riders in this group, but this was as close as they would get as the second attach group of Darren McCallum, Kane Airey, Nick Oakley, Tony French and newer riders Joe Daly, Simon Daw and David Thornton got themselves organised out and back Forrest rd. They were making good ground on the third scratch group going out Forest Rd and caught them a quite quickly due to the third scratch group being stopped by a red flag at Grundys rd.
With some help from Eddy Ziedaitis and Shane Korth they continued to work hard and caught the combined 11.30 and 18 minute groups up misery lane who looked like they were out for a Sunday cruse in the nice autumn sun!
With about 3 minutes to catch the three leaders John Bell, Ian Sumner and Terry Robinson with 10km to go the catch from this fast moving group was inevitable. The second scratch group hit the lead with about 4km to go, with a lot of riders sitting on Joe Daly, Darren McCallum, Simon Daw and others kept the pace high. Dave Thornton and then Joe Daly set up the sprint lead out for Simon Daw to take a well deserved win in his first handicap race. The scratch bunch had a long day out with Dave Warren just taking fastest time.
1st Simon Daw 2nd Darren McCallum 3rd Eddy Ziedaitis 4th Carl Leahy 5th Tony French 6th Kane Airey 7th Josh Williams 8th Nick Oakley 9th Carl Judd 10th Neil Maurer. FT Dave Warren.
Next Sunday scratch races 9am start.
Thanks to Colin Hooper for setting up the course and for being the head referee for the day. To all the marshals for making the race safe as usual and Richard Buckwell for volunteering to help today.